Legionnaires' Disease Lawyer

About a month ago, we began discussing the Quincy, Illinois Veterans Home outbreak. Since then, we have followed legislative attempts as well as the revelation last week that there were in fact 2 new cases found. Now just a week later, it was reported last night that there are, in fact, two additional cases stemming from the Qunicy, Illinois Veterans Home.

The Illinois Department of Public Health made this announcement on Tuesday, just hours after the state’s Senate Democrats had held a series of hearings regarding the outbreaks. This fourth patient is apparently in stable condition and the central issue being discussed by Senate Democrats on Tuesday evening was about a report outlining around $8 million in additional investments that would hopefully prevent such an incident from happening again and would include the partial replacement of older water pipes.

As a review, the Quincy, Illinois Veterans Home outbreak initially began in 2015 and have so far left 13 dead with dozens more ending up sick. Thoughts about these recent revelations are much the same as last week however clearly amplified; what appears to be frustrating about this incident is how new cases are still being discovered. With the initial outbreak happening almost two and a half years ago, one would assume that officials would have discovered all the cases, treated them, and made repairs to the water pipes and infrastructure to ensure this would not happen again.

As such, one would hope that these most recent revelations will encourage state officials and building administrators to implement methods, informed by research, which can reduce the likelihood of anything like this happening in the future, whether it be replacing old pipes, regular testing, regular flushing, or an overhaul to their water distribution management system as a whole.

Jules Zacher is an attorney in Philadelphia who has tried Legionnaires’ disease cases across the U.S.  Please visit LegionnaireLawyer.com again for updates.