LA Fitness reopens after closure due to Legionnaires’ disease outbreak

The LA Fitness spa facility in Naperville USA has reopened after an outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease which shut down the facilities on Oct. 23, 2013.

There were two confirmed cases of Legionnaires’ disease associated with the spa.

Spas present an especially high risk. Whether they are public or private the temperature regimes in the spa make them ideal breeding grounds for Legionella and therefore make it essential to control risks well and to check that those controls are working. The lack of proper risk management caused the closure of this facility for almost 3 months. Waiting 14 days for the lab test results in cases of outbreaks is unacceptable. In this time customers and staff are being exposed to the risks.

Regular rapid testing would have raised the alarm earlier, when the spa water system first went out of conformance.