A major Pennsylvania hospital where three premature infants died in a bacterial outbreak last year routinely failed to sanitize the equipment it used to prepare donor breast milk, according to a state health department report released Monday.

Health department staff ordered Geisinger Medical Center in Danville to correct several deficiencies, determining the hospital’s systemic failure to prevent infection in its most vulnerable patients constituted “immediate jeopardy” — a legal finding that means Geisinger placed its patients at risk of serious injury or death.

Geisinger had previously acknowledged the process it was using to prepare donor breast milk led to the deadly outbreak in the hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit. The hospital said Monday it immediately corrected the violations flagged by state inspectors.

A total of eight premature infants at Geisinger tested positive for the Pseudomonas bacterium between July 1 and Sept. 29, according to the health department’s report. Subsequent investigation found Pseudomonas in a cylinder used to prepare donor breast milk, on a brush used to clean the cylinder, and in breast milk that had been given to an infant who died Sept. 30, the report said.

Pseudomonas bacteria are common and often harmless but can pose a health risk in fragile patients.

Police seek person who tried to release bedbugs at Walmart

HARRISBURG — Someone appears to have deliberately tried to release bedbugs in a Walmart store, and police are searching for whoever was behind it, authorities said Monday.

Troopers have made no arrests and do not have any suspects, said Trooper Cindy Schic, a state police spokeswoman.

A manager from the Walmart store in Edinboro, in northwestern Pennsylvania, contacted police Saturday after store employees found pill bottles with bugs in them.

Some elements of the story, including whether the bugs were alive, are in dispute.

It started Thursday, when store staff found a closed pill bottle containing live bugs, authorities said. The bottle was found in a boy’s jacket for sale in the clothing department and thrown out in the trash, police said. A day later, a hygiene services contractor contacted by Walmart found bugs crawling in the men’s fitting room and identified them as bedbugs, police said.

However, a Walmart spokeswoman said Monday that the contractor, Ecolab, told Walmart that it had found no live bugs.