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A resident contracted Legionnaires’s disease at Vancrest of Urbana, an assisted living facility just off Route 68.
The disease is a form of legionellosis. Symptoms include a fever, chills a cough and aches. In some cases, there’s a decreased function of the kidney or pneumonia.
The disease comes from bacteria in fresh water and can grow in hot water tanks and plumbing systems.
“If the water isn’t hot enough, it might not be enough to kill the bacteria,” said Jones.
Health officials first learned of the case about two weeks ago. Two days later, state and local health officials did a walk-through with Vancrest staff. That same day, the water at Vancrest was shut off.
On July 19, steps were taken to cleanse the water system.
As of now, the showers at Vancrest are back on -- the faucets are not.
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Bottled water is being brought in for residents to drink and to wash their hands.
Health officials have identified one or two sites where the resident at Vancrest could have contracted the disease.
“Just to be safe, we’re going above and beyond and Vancrest is going above and beyond and testing the entire facility and installing filters throughout the entire facility,” said Jones.
It was about a week and a half ago that water samples were taken from Vancrest and sent to a lab for testing. Those results are due back by week’s end.
There’s about 500 cases of Legionnaire’s disease in Ohio every year.
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News Center 7 contacted a supervisor at Vancrest but she decline further comment for this story.
We will continue to update this story as more information is available.