Translated material
Big epidemic in a small town
The cause of an outbreak of pneumonia in the Sverdlovsk region was a rare virus
Three days after the outbreak of pneumonia in Verkhnyaya Pyshma (Sverdlovsk region), doctors identified the causative agent of the disease and suggested the causes of the emergency. Let us remind you that an outbreak in the satellite city of Yekaterinburg was recorded last Wednesday - 52 people were hospitalized in one day, two died on the first day.There are currently almost 100 people in hospital, and doctors have reported three deaths. There are seven people in intensive care. They could not determine the causative agent of the disease for a very long time: the sick people had no contact with each other and were from different social and age groups (among the patients there were 20-year-old young people and 80-year-old pensioners). Even bird flu was suspected in patients, and then the disease was attributed to weather fluctuations.
Finally, the Ministry of Health of the Sverdlovsk Region officially announced that the cause of the outbreak was the Legionella pneumophila virus. This is an extremely rare virus that was identified in the 70s of the last century. It is not known to be transmitted from person to person. Employees of the regional Ministry of Health conducted monitoring of the external environment, soil and water, and noted positive dynamics - the number of patients is not growing at the same rate as before.
The regional Ministry of Health suggests that the disease on such a large scale for small Verkhnyaya Pyshma could have arisen due to poor quality water. As the Interfax-Ural agency was informed by the press service of the ministry, in the city three days before the outbreak of the disease, pressure testing was carried out in the central hot water supply system, precisely in those areas from where the majority of cases came.
On Friday, the Verkhnyaya Pyshma prosecutor's office opened a criminal case under Part 3 of Art. 109 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (causing death by negligence). But there are no specific defendants in this case yet.