Medical professionals diagnosed the inmate’s Legionnaires disease Thursday afternoon, and prison officials initially shut off water at the prison to keep the disease from spreading. The source of the outbreak is unknown, but Legionnaires’comes through bacteria in water.
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According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), it is estimated that between 8,000 and 18,000 people are hospitalized with legionellosis in the United States each year.
On Friday, the state announced that an inmate at the San Francisco-area prison was diagnosed with the disease and about 20 others showed symptoms of pneumonia, prompting officials to shut off water service at the institution.
As well as, the jail has about 45 inmates beneath statement for respiratory sickness.
Simas couldn’t immediately say how much price is measured by the crisis or exactly how many bottled water for drinking and big water tanks, portable toilets were brought to the penitentiary. Portable bathrooms have also been brought in.
“Their emergency response planning at the prison seems to have paid off very well”, Dr. Bob Benjamin, Marin County’s deputy public health officer, said through a spokesman.
Willis said that luckily the issue was detected early. Prison officials admit the conditions are not comfortable.
So far, one inmate in San Quentin was hospitalized with the disease, but he’s not the only one affected. “It is transmitted through aerosolized water [such as steam], or inhaling contaminated soil”, said Joyce Hayhoe, a spokeswoman for the team responsible for California inmate healthcare.
Don Specter, director of Berkeley-based nonprofit Prison Law Office, which defends the rights of inmates and sued the state over inadequate health care in 2001, said his firm was monitoring the situation.
They are being tested to confirm the disease as prison and Marin County health officials search for the cause. There are at least 30 suspected cases of the disease.
The disease is found throughout the country.
The most notorious outbreak of Legionnaires’ was in Philadelphia in 1976, when approximately 200 people attending a hotel convention contracted the disease, and 34 died.
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The city’s health commissioner followed a current outbreak that sickened 128 individuals and killed 12 to your rooftop AC unit at a Bronx resort. Two new cases in the city were reported this week after the outbreak was thought to be over. Those inmates have not yet received an official diagnosis.
