Quebec City's public health chief says the Legionnaires' disease outbreak that has plagued that city appears to be under control.
Dr. Francois Desbiens says the actions the city's public health department have taken to get building owners in the outbreak zone to disinfect cooling towers appears to be bearing fruit.
The city is reporting one new case of Legionnaires' today, bringing the total in the outbreak to 176.
But there have only been three new cases this week, a significant slowing of the case count from earlier in the outbreak.
To date 11 people have died in the outbreak, which began in July.
Desbiens says it will be weeks before he gets the laboratory results he needs to see if the department can pinpoint the source of the infection.
That's because Legionella, the bacteria that triggers Legionnaires' disease, grows slowly in a laboratory setting.
The department does have bacterial samples from patients that show what the outbreak strain is. If samples taken from cooling towers come up with a match, public health officials should be able to identify the tower that sparked the outbreak.
But there's no guarantee they will succeed in getting that match. Desbiens says samples taken from some of the cooling towers have grown Legionella bacteria in the lab, but many have not.
Desbiens says while he hopes his team will find an answer to the mystery, the most important thing is to stop the spread of the disease.
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