GALESBURG, Ill. – A preschool teacher and cheerleading coach in this west-central Illinois city has died from a virulent form of meningitis, but a quick response from school and medical officials seems to have prevented the disease from spreading, Knox County health officials said Monday.

Sheila Redington, 44, died Sunday at OSF Saint Francis Medical Center in Peoria, where she had been in critical condition since Wednesday, her family said.

Redington, a preschool teacher at Costa Catholic School and head cheerleading coach at Galesburg High School, had meningococcal meningitis, a bacterial infection of the fluid around the spinal cord and brain, said Knox County Health Department spokeswoman Carrie Andrews.

The married mother of four felt ill during school on Tuesday and thought she had the flu, her husband, Tim Redington, said on an online Web site created to update his wife’s friends and family on her condition.

On Wednesday, she was flown to St. Francis, where she had been in a medically induced coma and was breathing on a ventilator. She developed a high fever, purple rash and extreme pain in her feet and legs, Tim Redington said.

No additional cases have been reported since Sheila Redington’s diagnosis, and officials did not anticipate any, Andrews said.

Costa’s preschool, which has about 100 children, was closed Wednesday but opened again Friday after the rooms were fogged with a cleansing chemical and scrubbed, officials said. Two other teachers and Redington’s family have begun taking antibiotics as a precaution.

“My heart is very heavy,” Costa principal Carolyn Koos told The (Galesburg) Register-Mail.

The bacteria that causes meningococcal meningitis spreads through coughing, kissing and sharing utensils or glasses, according to the Illinois Department of Public Health. It is not spread by casual contact or breathing the air around an affected person. Symptoms include fever, headache, stiff neck, nausea, vomiting, rash and lethargy.

Redington’s death is the second from meningitis this year in Illinois, state health department spokeswoman Melanie Arnold said. A 69-year-old man from Chicago’s western suburbs died Jan. 10 of the Neisseria meningitis strain, according to Kitty Loewy, spokeswoman for the Cook County Department of Public Health.

The strain that caused Sheila Redington’s illness, formally known as Neisseria meningitidis, is diagnosed in about 115 cases in Illinois every year, health officials said.