ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, November 8, 1996 TAG: 9611080051
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: RADFORD
SOURCE: MARK CLOTHIER STAFF WRITER
Health officials are continuing to hunt for an environmental source of the New River Valley outbreak of Legionnaires' disease that has killed one person and infected 15 others since mid-October.
No new Legionnaires' cases have been confirmed since Monday. Three patients remain hospitalized - one in critical condition at Salem's Veterans Affairs Medical Center and two in stable condition at Carilion Radford Community Hospital.
Dr. Jody Hershey, director of the New River Health District, said the bulk of the threat is over and that people should go about their business as usual.
"Even though we haven't released our theories as to the common source of the bacterium, if during any part of this investigation we're out collecting samples and we find anything we determine to be detrimental to the public health, we'd correct it immediately," Hershey said.
Though the outbreak in the New River Valley is the first in Virginia, a few outbreaks occur across the country annually. Just last month, for instance, a Legionnaires' outbreak in suburban Detroit killed four people and infected 30. Health officials there narrowed the cases to a six square-mile stretch of metropolitan Detroit but have not named a common environmental source.
New River Valley health officials, meanwhile, are still interviewing randomly selected residents for a control group: patients who haven't been infected with the Legionella bacterium but share age, gender and existing medical conditions with the 15 remaining confirmed patients, Hershey said.
Interviews will require the control's permission, will be fairly brief - 30 minutes or so - and can be done over the phone. Health officials will ask residents where they've gone in the past few weeks, what they've done, where they work and where they shop and other questions. Then they'll compare the answers with those given by the 15 surviving Legionnaires' patients to help firm their working theories on a possible source for the bacterium.
"Residents of the New River Valley need to be aware that they may be called as part of this investigation in an effort to try and identify the source of this outbreak," Hershey said.
"I ask that those people selected to be interviewed cooperate fully by answering questions as completely and objectively as possible," he said.
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