Local authorities alerted Michigan health officials of a suspected link between Flint’s water system and a deadly outbreak of Legionnaire’s disease in October 2014, but state officials quickly grew frustrated with their lack of cooperation in an investigation.
The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services released 53 pages of emails Tuesday afternoon that show the Michigan Department of Community Health and Genesee County Health Department working together on the Legionnaire’s disease outbreak in October 2014.
Shannon Johnson, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the state agency, sent out an email to several state officials with a briefing of the situation in Flint on Oct. 13, 2014. The email indicates a colleague of hers was briefed by county health officials the week before.
The county health officials suspected the Legionnaire’s disease outbreak was coming from Flint’s water supply. However, Johnson notes county officials had been sloppy in how they were investigating the outbreak.
“The picture has been clouded by the fact that most cases being reported did not have onset dates recorded,” she wrote. “The current hypothesis is that the source of the outbreak may be the Flint municipal water.”
Gov. Rick Snyder, who maintains that he didn’t know about the outbreak until just before telling the public, finally made the Legionnaire’s disease outbreak known to the public in January 2016. Emails released last week by Progress Michigan, a liberal advocacy group, show a top aide to Snyder was made aware of the outbreak in March 2015.
That official, Harvey Hollins, has reportedly said he didn’t bring the issue to Snyder because there was not enough information.
The Flint Journal reported Tuesday afternoon that emails show that Jerry Ambrose, the emergency manager appointed by Snyder to be in charge of Flint, also knew about the Legionnaire’s outbreak in March 2015.
The emails shows further evidence of a plodding governmental response to possible issues with Flint’s water supply. Local, state and federal officials have been under the microscope for their response to concerns about lead in the city’s water but not to the response to an outbreak of Legionnaire’s disease that killed 10 and sickened 87.
In her email, Johnson adds that she spoke with Shurooq Hasan, an epidemiologist in Genesee County. The email showed nearly all of the sick individuals were within the city of Flint and used city water.
The cases took place further away from the water treatment plant, where chemicals that might kill legionella bacteria grew weaker, and the water treatment plant did not test for the bacteria.
The environmental health supervisor for the Genesee County Health Department wrote in the Progress Michigan emails that he was not able to get water testing results from the city’s water department, despite a Freedom of Information Act request.
After the email from Johnson in October 2014 showing cooperation between the state and city, bureaucratic stagnation seemed to take hold.
It took nearly three months for the two agencies to start working together on an investigation and nearly four months for substantive conversations about how to investigate the outbreak took place.
The emails also show local officials jumped over the state’s head and went to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC told the Genesee County officials to work with the state.
“Wow,” wrote Jay Fielder, a section manager at the state.
“This is getting old real fast,” Johnson responded.
“Please thank the CDC person for looping us in. At the same time please provide a summary to date of Genesee’s ‘efforts’ on this investigation recommendations we’ve given, where we offered to assist and how that has been received,” said Jim Collins, a state doctor.
On Feb. 13, 2015, the state officials finished the outbreak-specific questionnaire to send to patients and decided to go back and interview all the people who got Legionnaire’s disease dating to June 2014, emails show.
On that same day, Genesee officials notified select personnel in three local hospitals in Genesee County about the outbreak. That was against the advice of the state officials, who said it would be better to alert all healthcare officials in the area.
Interviews with patients for an investigation of the outbreak finally started in late February 2015. It was apparently too late to track the source of the legionella outbreak to confirm if it came from the city’s water supply.
A Flint official contacted the CDC again about the situation in April 2015, emails show, which prompted a CDC official to write an email later that month to county officials expressing concern about the outbreak, the Detroit Free Press reported Tuesday.
The Free Press report shows further bickering between state and county officials about CDC involvement, which typically comes at the request of a state department.
The emails obtained by the Free Press also show a county health official outright accusing Snyder’s administration of covering up the outbreak.
“Now evidence is clearly pointing to a deliberate cover-up,” Genesee County Health Department’s public health division director Tamara Brickey wrote, per the report. “In my opinion, if we don’t act soon, we are going to become guilty by association.”
