SEATTLE—Two patients treated at the University of Washington Medical Center in Seattle’s Montlake neighborhood have been diagnosed with Legionnaires’ disease, and they may have gotten infected while they were being treated, according to UW Medicine.
Both patients were treated in September. One of them has since been discharged, according to a Friday news release.
“We don’t know the source of the patients’ infections in these cases, and we may never know because often patients have very complex medical situations,” Claire Brostrom-Smith, health care-associated infections manager at Public Health — Seattle & King County, said in a statement.
Legionnaires’ disease is a serious type of pneumonia caused by the bacteria Legionella. People can get sick when they breathe in small droplets of water or accidentally swallow water containing Legionella into their lungs, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The bacteria do not spread person to person, and most healthy people exposed to Legionella do not get sick.
Any patient with Legionnaires’ disease who stayed in a health care facility for part of the 14 days before symptoms showed is treated as a possible health care-associated infection.
UW Medicine said in the release it is “working closely” with Public Health, the Washington State Department of Health and the CDC to investigate the cases. Testing of the hospital’s water has so far been negative for Legionella, the news release said.
Patients with concerns should call their local health care provider.
In 2016, after two people died from the disease, Legionella was detected in the water supply at the UW Medical Center. The bacteria was found in several places, including an ice machine and sinks in the hospital’s Cascade Tower, and on heater-cooler units that regulate patients’ temperature during surgery.
Health departments reported nearly 10,000 cases of Legionnaires’ disease in the United States in 2018. However, because Legionnaires’ disease is likely underdiagnosed, that could be an undercount, according to the CDC. About 1 in 10 people who get sick from Legionnaires’ disease die.
The disease was identified after an outbreak in 1976 sickened attendees at an American Legion meeting in Philadelphia.
