14 people die in Poland from ‘legionnaires’ illness

Fourteen people have passed away and over 150 cases have been confirmed after an outbreak of Legionnaires‘ disease in the southeastern part of Poland.

A lot of people who got sick have been brought to the hospital ever since the outbreak was found last week.

On Tuesday, nine people were found to have a new illness.

Officials are currently investigating how the legionella bacteria, which can make people sick, entered the water system in the city of Rzeszow and nearby areas.

The place where the outbreak started is worrying because Rzeszow is a main center for supporting Ukraine with military and humanitarian help, and it has a lot of US military there too.

“We haven’t discovered any evidence suggesting sabotage,” said Stanislaw Zaryn, the Polish government‘s representative for information security, in an interview with Polsat News.

He said the special services wanted to investigate if sabotage was the cause of the outbreak, considering where it happened.

Legionnaires’ disease is a very bad lung infection that you can get by breathing in small drops of water that have the infection. You don’t get it from drinking water that has the infection. You can’t catch it from someone else.

You can get sick from using shower, toilet or air conditioning.

The first signs of the disease can be mistaken for the flu. People over 50 years old and those with weaker immune systems are at a higher risk for getting sick.

Legionnaires’ disease is cured with a series of antibiotics.

The majority of those who died were old. Everyone was sick with other long-term diseases like cancer.

The search to find out why the outbreak happened is still ongoing. The first test samples didn’t give a clear answer on where the bacteria is coming from.

Extra chlorine has been put into the public water system to clean it, and officials have told people to heat up the water before they drink it.

In 1977, scientists discovered a tiny organism that caused a serious lung infection. They found this organism after investigating an outbreak of pneumonia that happened a year earlier at a gathering of the American Legion in Philadelphia.