The number of cases in Queenstown's cryptosporidium outbreak has doubled to 15 today.
The parasite causes nasty symptoms like vomiting, diarrhoea and fever. It has prompted the Queenstown District Council to issue a boil-water notice last on Monday night in case the parasite is coming from the public water supply.
It all looked normal in tourist hot-spot Queenstown on Tuesday with people everywhere and the local institution Ferg Burger firing up their grill.
But when taking a closer look, bottled water can be seen everywhere because the town's supply may not be safe to drink.
"We've now got 15 confirmed cases of cryptosporidium and we've put a boil water notice on approximately 7500 houses until we get more information," Queenstown Lakes District Council's Tony Avery said.
However, doctors believe that given how contagious cryptosporidium is, the true number of infections could be higher.
"There is likely to be, yes, it's quite an infective bug, and if it is in the water supply, then it's likely," Royal College of GP's Luke Bradford warned.
Authorities still have no idea if the growing number of infections are caused by the town's water supply, which mostly comes from Lake Wakatipu.
They have now started testing the water, but this bug can easily be missed in large volumes of water.
Until the source of the mysterious infections is found, residents in Queenstown, Fernhill, Sunshine Bay, Frankton, Quail Rise, Kelvin Heights and Hanley's Farm are being asked to boil their water for one minute using a timer, to kill any cryptosporidium that may cause them to get sick.
"You get foul-smelling watery diarrhoea, is a predominant one, that comes with tummy cramps, abdominal pains, low-grade fever, headache, a feeling of fatigue, decreased appetite, nausea and vomiting is often present," Bradford explained.
One woman, 20, who is a chef was hospitalised with the parasite on Thursday.
The woman said she'd fallen sick with diarrhoea, nausea, vomiting and fever, and as soon as her GP laid eyes on her, she took the woman to be rehydrated on an IV drip.
The woman said she's never felt so sick in her whole life.
A stool sample taken while the woman was admitted, proved she had the parasite.
She, along with other cases, have been working with public health authorities to contact-trace the source.
It's also giving the hospitality scene a bit of a headache.
Republic Hospitality Group CEO Blair Impey runs 10 bars and restaurants in the area. He's got enough bottled drinking water, but he said finding ice that isn't made from the Queenstown water supply is a huge challenge.
"The good buggers from Southland, the Invercargill Licensing trust are actually bringing up a trailer full of 200 bags of ice right now and last night we managed to secure 150kg of ice from out of town, so we'll just keep hustling," Impey said.
After everything the hospitality scene has been through in the last 3 years here, "we're good to go".
They are determined to beat this latest setback.
This article's headline has been corrected to reflect the number of Cryptosporidium cases had doubled not the number of parasites, as previously reported.
