Issued on: 04/09/2022 – 01:04Modified: 04/09/2022 – 01:02
Buenos Aires (AFP)- Argentine health officials said on Saturday that four people at a clinic in the northwestern province of Tucumán had died of Legionnaires’ disease, a relatively rare bacterial infection of the lungs.
Health Minister Carla Vizzotti told reporters that legionnaires had been identified as the underlying cause of double pneumonia in the four, who had suffered from high fevers, body aches and shortness of breath.
The deaths, all since Monday, occurred in a single clinic in the city of San Miguel de Tucumán.
The latest, on Saturday morning, was that of a 48-year-old man with underlying health conditions. A 70-year-old woman who had undergone surgery at the clinic was also a victim.
Seven other symptomatic cases have been identified, all from the same facility and nearly all linked to clinic staff, provincial officials said.
Of those seven, “four remain hospitalized, three of them with respiratory assistance and three with home surveillance, with less complicated clinical symptoms,” provincial Health Minister Luis Medina Ruiz said on Saturday.
The disease, which first appeared at a 1976 meeting of the American Legion veterans group in the US city of Philadelphia, has been linked to contaminated water or dirty air conditioning systems.
When the outbreak was first detected in Tucumán, doctors tested those affected for Covid-19, influenza and hantavirus, but ruled them all out.
The samples were then sent to the prestigious Malbran Institute in Buenos Aires. The evidence there pointed to legionnaires.
On Wednesday, Medina Ruiz had said that “toxic and environmental causes” could not be ruled out. She noted that the clinic’s climate control systems were being overhauled.
Vizzotti said authorities are working to ensure the clinic is safe for patients and staff.
Héctor Sale, president of the Tucumán provincial medical college, earlier this week described the bacterial infection as “aggressive.”
But he added that it is not normally spread from person to person, and that no close contacts of any of the 11 infected people showed symptoms.
© 2022 AFP
