⁍ Texas officials said on Tuesday it could take several months to ensure the public water system in Lake Jackson, Texas, is free of a brain-eating amoeba.

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⁍ Governor Greg Abbott issued a disaster declaration for Brazoria County on Sunday after the amoeba killed Josiah Christopher McIntyre.

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⁍ Lake Jackson residents have been asked to boil water until further notice.

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– The Texas town of Lake Jackson is under a state of emergency after the death of a 6-year-old boy from an infection by the brain-eating amoeba Naegleria fowleri. Residents have been told to boil their water for at least two weeks, and Gov. Greg Abbott declared a disaster declaration for Brazoria County on Sunday after the death of Josiah Christopher McIntyre, the Houston Chronicle reports. The amoeba is found in many bodies of water in the southern US, but it is exceedingly rare to contract it via drinking water. “There is no other way to get it,” the commissioner of the Texas Department of State Health Services tells Reuters. “You cannot get that infection from drinking the water or merely showering in it.” State health officials tested 54 sites in Lake Jackson and found 11 of them lower than state minimums for disinfectant levels, which would normally kill the amoeba. They plan to raise chlorine levels in the water for at least 60 days, then remove the boil-water notice, which could take up to three weeks, the executive director of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality tells Reuters. Officials say they were not aware of the amoeba having infiltrated public drinking water in Texas previously.