A lot of you guys are not thinking this through or maybe not thinking just reacting. May I explain for the technically challenged????
Many houses in Thailand have shower heaters. If you turn off the water supply to the house and open the valve to the shower heater it will not switch on. Why? The shower heater requires positive pressure in the supply line before it switches on. If the shower heater in question has a booster pump to give an adequate flow at the shower head, it still requires a positive pressure at the inlet before it will switch on.. Thus the pressure in the line supplying the shower heater must always be positive, about 1 psi. There is no suction taking place so there will be no potential for ingress of germs into the supply pipe.