Elderly woman dies in hospital after contracting disease
An elderly woman who contracted legionnaires disease has died as Victorian authorities work to determine the source of the outbreak.
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00:00Well, sadly, a woman in her 90s has died as a result of this Legionnaire's outbreak.
00:08Authorities say that she became unwell quite quickly and she passed away on Friday.
00:14Case numbers have remained stable since yesterday, 60 confirmed cases, 10 suspected and a number
00:20of people in ICU.
00:21But today we found out a little bit more about this outbreak and what's being done to contain
00:27it.
00:28This is a highly unusual outbreak.
00:31Authorities believe that it could be due to the weather systems at play, the fact that
00:34it's been cold and windy, as well as a potentially high load of the Legionella bacteria coming
00:40from this tower, which they now believe to be the source.
00:43They've narrowed the source down to two suburbs, Laverton North and Deremet, to the west of
00:48the city.
00:49And they're thinking the culprit is a cooling tower within an industrial area that sits
00:53across those two suburbs.
00:55There are about 100 cooling towers in this area.
00:59Authorities say they've gotten to 41 of them.
01:02They're disinfecting these towers and they're testing them to see if they are that one source
01:07of the outbreak.
01:09Let's hear from Victoria's Chief Health Officer, Dr Claire Looker.
01:13I think there's a high probability that we have already visited the tower and disinfected
01:18it.
01:19And that is really driven by some pretty compelling epidemiology and crossover of where many of
01:25our cases have visited.
01:27I'm cautious.
01:28I obviously can't say that with certainty until we have test results back.
01:33But yes, confident that it is one of the ones we've visited.
01:37Now Legionnaires is not contagious.
01:38It can't be contracted person to person.
01:41It comes from water vapour, from dust particles.
01:46So it's not contagious, but authorities do want people to be on the lookout for symptoms
01:51nonetheless.
01:52They say it can present a lot like a chest infection and they're asking people to go
01:57to the doctor if they do feel like they've been in those areas and that they're feeling
02:02unwell.