Warning issued after 100 fall ill after drinking tap water in south Sweden

Health authorities in a southern Sweden municipality have warned residents against drinking tap water without boiling it first after at least 100 locals fell ill this week.

The local municipality issued the warning to 1,500 residents south of the town of Kristianstad after at least 100 people had reported stomach symptoms online, according to the news agency TT on Wednesday.

"We do not know if it's the water as we tested it yesterday. But a lot of people are ill. That we know," Kristianstad municipality's water and sewage director, Inger Hansson, told TT.

Preliminary test results from a water plant in the village of Everod were expected to be delivered on Thursday.

The municipality said that over 20 cases, among them seven residents at an elderly care home, could all trace their drinking water back to that plant.

"It's like a stomach flu. At first my wife got sick, then I did," Bertil Persson, a resident of one of the affected villages, told TT.

Authorities had on Wednesday begun to supply water in tanks disconnected from the sewage system.

Some residents criticized local authorities for what they believed to be a lacking response.

"I am baffled that they did not issue a warning. Older people can get very sick," Jonny Masander, a resident who fell ill on Monday, told the local newspaper Kristianstadsbladet. Endit