Improvised hostel possible source of typhoid outbreak in Podolsk - investigators
KRASNOGORSK, Russia. Dec 6 (Interfax) - The people who have contracted typhoid in Podolsk, a Moscow satellite town, lived in a non-residential building used as a hostel, Russia's Investigative Committee said on Friday, citing a preliminary investigation.
The conclusion followed questioning a typhoid virus carrier.
"It has been preliminarily established that the woman lived in an auxiliary administrative building that was rented by the general director of OOO Byt-Servis Managing Company and used by him as a hostel, i.e. was misused. Living conditions in the building failed to meet sanitary and epidemiological standards," the Investigative Committee said in a statement.
"The illegal organization of accommodations may have entailed the emergence of a hotbed of the disease," it said.
The Byt-Servis general director told investigators that those living in the building had neither signed any residence agreement nor were charged any rent.
"The investigative authorities will issue a legal qualification of the actions of the people who made the building where typhoid virus was detected available for residence. A procedural decision will be made on the basis of the findings," the statement said.
It said 14 people, including two minors, were in the hospital with typhoid in Podolsk, but earlier on Friday a spokeswoman for Moscow region's health ministry, Natalya Politykina, told Interfax that 11 people in Podolsk had been confirmed as typhoid cases.
