An outbreak of pneumonia cases at the Marine Corps School of Infantry-West at Camp Pendleton, California, has officials taking extra precautions, opening a walk-in clinic and asking any personnel with specific symptoms to get screened.

A recent social media posting notified Marines that there had been a “spike in cases of pneumonia” and advised personnel to seek medical attention if they had symptoms such as chest pain, shortness of breath, temperature greater than 100.4 F or a cough lasting longer than three days.

Over a three day period, officials told Marine Corps Times, the SOI-W clinic treated 138 pneumonia cases, far above the average of five to eight cases a day.

“The majority were treated and released,” Teresa Ovalle with Marine Corps Combat Development Command wrote in an email.

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After that three-day period, cases returned to normal levels.

“We are confident that this issue has been contained and all precautions has been made to mitigate any further spread of this illness,” according to an April 27 SOI-W Facebook post.

Most infections screened at the clinic were mild, Ovalle wrote.

“We are working closely with Marine Corps leadership to provide all necessary medical support and our preventive medicine staff are working diligently to determine and eliminate the cause of the current infections,” she said.

Todd South has written about crime, courts, government and the military for multiple publications since 2004 and was named a 2014 Pulitzer finalist for a co-written project on witness intimidation. Todd is a Marine veteran of the Iraq War.

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