In a shocking incident, a septuagenarian died from a flesh-eating bacteria that health officials said he contracted from eating a bad raw oyster at a Florida seafood restaurant in the US, the ABC News reported. According to officials the man became seriously ill after eating the bad oyster on July 8 and died on July 10.


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Florida Health Department officials said the 71-year-old man died from Vibrio vulnificus that resulted in gastrointestinal illness. The name of the man who died, a Sarasota County, Florida, resident, was not released nor was the restaurant. "The individual who died was exposed to Vibrio vulnificus through consuming a raw oyster," the health department said in a statement to ABC News.


Florida health officials said it was the first case and fatality involving the flesh-eating bacteria in Sarasota County this year. 


The incident occurred on the heels of a warning earlier from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that 12 people in the US contracted the Vibrio bacteria by eating fresh Venezuelan crab meat. None of those cases was fatal.


The department also confirmed that there were four other cases of Vibrio in the state in the past week, but none of those was fatal or in Sarasota County. Health officials said the causes of the other cases of Vibrio are under investigation.


Vibrio can also be contracted by swimming in warm saltwater with fresh cuts or scrapes. Manatee County has had one case of flesh-eating bacteria so far in 2018, but it was not deadly, officials said.


There were 11 deaths reported in Florida from Vibrio in 2017. Meanwhile, the CDC said the Vibrio illnesses caused by the Venezuelan crab meat occurred in Maryland, Louisiana, Pennsylvania, and Washington, DC.