SerpApi.Org
A fifth person has died as a result of a Legionnaires’ disease outbreak in a Manhattan neighborhood, according to the city’s health department, which also shared that dozens of buildings were found to have live legionella bacteria in their cooling towers.
The New York City Health Department said confirmatory culture test results came back positive for the live bacteria in 34 cooling towers at 33 Upper East Side buildings. Nine cooling towers had negative test results, while results for the remaining 140 cooling towers tested are expected to come in over throughout the week.
The results show that there may not be one source in particular that started the outbreak, but rather multiple sources could have contributed to it and suggest that cooling towers are not being properly maintained.
The cooling towers that tested positive for the live bacteria had already undergone remediation and have been fully cleaned, the Health Department said. The department provided a list of addresses where the live bacteria were found, and it will continue to update the list on its website.
These are the addresses that tested positive for live Legionella bacteria:
“We believe that through our aggressive strategy of testing and remediation we have eliminated the source of exposure. We will learn more as our investigation unfolds and look forward to updating our existing policies and procedures to preventing future clusters,” said NYC Health Commissioner Dr. Alister Martin. “Right now, we are focused on identifying the source of exposure through laboratory analyses and holding accountable anyone found out of compliance with local laws.”
The outbreak has led to five deaths; Tuesday marked the fifth consecutive day a death had been reported by health officials. A total of 82 people have been sickened by the illness, eight of whom were still in the hospital as of Tuesday night.
One of those who died was 88-year-old Robert Goldstein, a retired businessman and an Air Force veteran.
“My husband died in the Lenox Hill ICU. I watched him suffer on life support every single day,” his widow, Ida, said Tuesday, her first public comments since her husband’s death on Friday. “To know that a negligent property owner turned our neighborhood into a toxic danger zone, forcing me to breathe in the same air, is an unimaginable horror.”
Goldstein said when she finds out who owns the cooling tower that made her husband sick on July 2, she plans to file a lawsuit.
The same day Goldstein got sick, city health officials said they had stepped up their disinfecting policy, sanitizing tanks that tested preliminarily positive for legionella before final results came in.
But New York City Council Speaker Julie Menin, who represents the Upper East Side, said the city’s efforts were not enough. She wanted Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration to proactively disinfect all of the cooling towers in the area once they identified the epicenter. The administration said disinfecting before taking samples would make it harder to nail down the source.
“It’s not the common cold, people can die, and people did die,” said Menin. “With every hour the towers were not disinfected, with every day they were not prophylactically disinfected, more New Yorkers tragically died. That is simply unacceptable.”
City officials believe the Legionnaires’ outbreak may be now under control three weeks after the legionella bacteria was first confirmed in the neighborhood.
“We believe we have now eliminated the source of exposure. Regardless, we will continue to inspect cooling towers and aggressively enforce health laws,” Mamdani said Monday. “I’m heartbroken by the loss of my fellow New Yorkers and send my deepest condolences to their loved ones.”
Legionnaires’ disease is a form of severe pneumonia caused by a type of bacteria that thrives in warm, stagnant water. Health officials have focused on testing cooling towers that are part of air conditioning systems for large buildings. Property owners have been ordered to drain and disinfect towers where there has been a positive test result.
“I want to reassure New Yorkers they can use tap water, bathe, shower and cook and use air conditioners at home,” said Mamdani.
Legionnaires’ disease is treatable but 10% of people will die due to complications from the illness, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Last year, seven people died and more than 100 were sickened during an outbreak in Harlem.
