More hit by Legionnaires' in UK

August 4, 2002 Posted: 10:57 AM EDT (1457 GMT)

BARROW, England -- Seventy-four people are now undergoing medical treatment as Britain faced its worst outbreak of the deadly Legionnaire's disease for 17 years, health authorities in Barrow, north-western England, said.

The number of confirmed cases jumped to 45 on Sunday from 39 on Saturday, and a further 29 people were suspected to have contracted the disease.

A council officer responsible for the maintenance of an air-conditioning unit at the Forum 28 arts centre thought to be at the centre of the outbreak has been suspended.

The technical manager at Barrow Borough Council was suspended on full pay "to minimise contact with other officers" while investigations into the source of the outbreak were ongoing.

The 30-year-old air conditioning unit at the centre should have been doused and checked for bacteria no less than once a month, council chief executive Tom Campbell told a news conference.

He said all records showing if that had taken place had been handed over to the police and the Health and Safety Executive. The council had been advised not to comment further.

Of the 74 people receiving treatment, 15 were in intensive care with four of those "giving cause for concern" the hospital dealing with most of the cases said in a statement.

Fears were growing that the outbreak could rival that of 1985, when 68 people were infected and 23 people died in the English town of Stafford.

"The hospital continues to cope well with the number of patients admitted from this outbreak," Ian Cumming, chief executive of the Morecambe Bay Hospitals National Health Service Trust said in a statement.

"We continue to have enough beds available for all projected admissions." But he added the availability of intensive care beds was being reviewed on an hourly basis.

Cumming told Reuters on Saturday 10 people a day were being admitted to hospital with possible Legionnaire's symptoms, and this was expected to continue for 12 days.

"Incubation is between five and 10 days...it is usually six or seven days before symptoms show," he said.

Previous outbreaks have claimed the lives of up to 20 percent of those infected with the pneumonia-like illness.

Professor John Ashton, public health director for England's northwest region, said the air-conditioning unit at the Forum 28 centre was thought to be the source and had been shut down.

"If the source is where we think it is, then control measures have now been taken and it doesn't pose a further threat to public health," he said.

"There is no need for panic. It seems to be a local source, a local problem which is being tackled."

Barrow Borough Council said on Sunday other public buildings were being checked.

The disease, named in 1976 when an outbreak killed 29 people at an American Legion Convention in Philadelphia, is a form of pneumonia caused by bacteria living in water droplets.

Symptoms are at first flu-like, followed by fever and chills, then a dry cough.

Last year, more than 200 people contracted the disease in the Spanish city of Murcia, but only a few deaths were reported.