RALEIGH, N.C. – Wake County officials are sounding the alarm about a parasite that could be in your community pool. They’re advising pools to hyper-chlorinate the water to make sure no one else gets infected.
Pools usually hyper-chlorinate, or shock their water, once a week to take care of any unwanted bacteria.
Health officials are advising all community pools to do the same to keep folks safe from a nasty gastro-intestinal disease.
“It’s easily transmitted from person to person once you have Crypto, and also, it takes some time to get it out of your system,” said Dr. Sue Lynn Ledford, director of the Wake County Public Health Division.
Cryptosporidiosis, or Crypto, can live in water and has shown up in lakes, rivers, ponds and pools.
The county has seen cases before.
So far this year there have been 20 reported infections, up from 13 last year.
A majority of those cases have been from pools.
“When there has been an outbreak, you do a little bit more vigilance in how you would take care of that situation, so that’s why we’re encouraging the pools to do this,” said Ledford.
Health officials are advising all pools that see a high volume of swimmers to hyper-chlorinate, or drastically raise the level of chlorine to wipe out the crypto parasite.
“You have to close the pool in order to have the chlorine at the required chlorine levels,” said Jessica Sanders with Wake County Environmental Services.
Raleigh resident Betsy Nelms says her community pool did the extra cleaning just this week.
“It’s great, I mean I have three kids and I don’t want them to get it, but I also don’t want them to give anything to anybody,” said Nelms.
Crypto can stay in your system for weeks, but usually runs its course over several days.
“You’re going to experience watery diarrhea, perhaps fever, nausea, vomiting. You’re going to be pretty miserable for several days,” said Ledford.
Nelms said she has faith in her local pool, and the warning won’t keep them from swimming this weekend.
“Our pool is super safe and they’re always looking out for us, so I don’t really foresee there being any problem,” said Nelms.
Wake County officials said if you have a private pool in your own backyard you shouldn’t worry as much, because you probably don’t have as many swimmers as a public pool. But then again, they also say it’s better to stay on the safe side.
