Barton Health officials are reporting there is no threat to patients of the South Lake Tahoe hospital to contract fungal meningitis.

“Barton Memorial Hospital does not purchase any drugs from NECC nor, for the nine-years that I have been the director of pharmacy, has the hospital ever purchased any drugs from that company,” Barry Keil stated in a memo. “The epidural steroids provided by the hospital pharmacy and used at Barton Hospital, come directly from the drug manufacturer and are not pre-prepared by an outside compounding pharmacy [such as the NECC].”

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention has reported 137 people with fungal meningitis linked to epidural steroid injections of the steroid, methylprednisolone and 12 related deaths. The contamination of these epidural injections was the result of contamination by a single compounding pharmacy in Massachusetts, New England Compounding Center.

The CDC is coordinating a multistate investigation of fungal meningitis among patients who received an epidural steroid injection with a potentially contaminated product.