A two-year-old girl from Stockholm has died after becoming infected with the EHEC bacteria.
The girl fell ill during a visit to Mora in central Sweden last Sunday. She died a few days later. The source of the infection is not yet known.
Enterohaemorrhagic E. coli (EHEC) is an intestinal bacterium primarily found in the saliva and bodily waste of cattle, sheep and goats but infections can also be transmitted from person to person and via food.
The Swedish Institute for Infectious Disease Control (Smittskyddsinstitutet) said it had received around 100 reports of EHEC infections so far this year, which it said was a normal figure. Infections are most common during the summer.
The last time a person died in Sweden after being infected with the bacteria was in 2005. That too was an isolated case that did not result in an epidemic, said Smittskyddsinstitutet in a statement.