The name of the Linn County youth who died of meningitis last night has been released. Evan Brewer of Fairfax was 17. He died just hours after being taken to a Cedar Rapids hospital. Vicki Smith is the nursing supervisor for the Linn County Public Health Department, where medical experts are trying to determine how the teen became infected.At least two-thousand children in the Manchester area are getting vaccines today to ward off meningitis. Three cases of meningitis appeared in Delaware County in recent weeks. Smith says it’s not yet known whether the strain of meningitis that killed Brewer is the same as in the Delaware County cases. She says there are no plans to do mass vaccinations in the Cedar Rapids area.Smith says it’s expected to be two or three days before the lab tests can nail down any possible links — or rule them out.More than two-dozen friends and relatives of Brewer have headed for hospitals to be tested for the disease and none of them are sick.
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