Regional medical officer of health Dr. Yves Leger (Image by RL)
New Brunswick Public Health continues to investigate the cause of a legionnaires’ disease outbreak in Moncton, but the investigation does not involve a cooling tower registry.
After a similar outbreak two years ago, Regional Medical Health Officer Dr. Yves Leger recommended a registry for cooling towers to ease the process should another outbreak occur.
“Even with the pandemic… I’ve been informed that there’s been a lot of work that’s been done,” said Leger regarding progress on the registry.
A cooling tower was blamed for the last outbreak in Moncton that resulted in 16 confirmed cases of legionellosis.
Leger declined to comment on who he believes is responsible for implementing a registry and whether legislation should be passed to enforce the use of a registry.
Regardless of how it is implemented, Leger said there needs to be measures to ensure the proper cleaning measures are followed to avoid another outbreak.
“A way in which we can ensure that best practices are being adhered to because certainly, the registry is one tool that will help us to quickly identify potentially contaminated sites if we have an outbreak, but I think as public health practitioners we also want to look at preventing the outbreak in the first place.”
