The strain was isolated during the years 1953-1955 from a patient in Malaysia by Alexander et al. (1957), who described it as a new serovar named haemolyticus. In the serovar list of 1967 (WHO, 1967) the name was corrected in haemolytica.
The strain was submitted to factor analysis by Kmety (1977) and placed in the subgroup Saxkoebing.