Legionnaires Disease Outbreak
9 Possible Deaths and Dozens of Cases Reported
Dozens if Cases and Nine Deaths
Respiratory Infection Outbreak Cause
What Happened?!
In this case, a large cooling tower which had provided A/C to many different apartment buildings became the home to the Legionella bacteria where it soon thrived and infected dozens of people. Richard Becker, a scientist who helped discovered the cause of the respiratory infection in many patients stated, "Legionella, the bacteria that caused this respiratory infection in many patients, lives naturally in the environment. What we had to do was match the bacteria from the patients urine samples to the bacteria to its original home. Which, in this case, was the cooling towers, and it was a positive match."
Should I Be Scared?
How Can I Not Get Sick?.... What About a Cure?
As for medical attention, there are 3 major classes of antibiotics for the patients diagnosed with the Legionnaires Disease. They include the fluoroquinolones; levofloxacin and moxifloxacin, the macrolides; erythromycin and azithromyocin and the last group is tetracyclines which is consists of doxycycline and glycylcyclines. The determination of which antibiotics is to be prescribed to the patients is mostly dependent on their clinical state, medicine capabilities, and the certainty of the diagnosis to the patient. In more severe cases that seem more resistant to a single antibiotic, a second drug, such as rifampin, may be added.