New York City’s health department reported a fifth fatality connected to a legionnaires’ disease outbreak in Manhattan’s Upper East Side neighborhood on Tuesday. The department confirmed 82 total cases of the disease, with five deaths, eight people currently hospitalized, and 56 discharged. Health officials noted that no new cases had been diagnosed in six days and no new symptoms reported in over 10 days, though they cautioned that case counts could change as investigations continued.
Investigators traced the outbreak to cooling towers in Upper East Side buildings. Confirmatory culture tests identified live legionella bacteria in 34 cooling towers across 33 buildings, while nine towers returned negative results. Results for approximately 140 additional cooling tower systems were pending. The 34 towers that tested positive have undergone remediation and cleaning, as have all previously positive buildings.
Dr. Alister Martin, the city’s health commissioner, stated that the department responded rapidly to the outbreak and directed all buildings with positive test results to immediately clean and disinfect their cooling towers. Martin said the city believed the source of exposure had been eliminated through its testing and remediation strategy. He indicated the city would examine its policies following the investigation.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani defended the administration’s response when asked about criticism from city council speaker Julie Menin, who accused the health department of moving too slowly. Mamdani stated that the city employed both culture and PCR testing methods, allowing for faster results than previous procedures that relied solely on culture tests. He also noted that public health experts advised against blanket disinfection of all cooling towers citywide, as that could compromise their long-term effectiveness against legionnaires’ disease.
Menin announced that the city council would hold an emergency oversight hearing regarding the outbreak. According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, legionnaires’ disease is a serious form of pneumonia transmitted through inhalation of bacteria-containing mist, with approximately one in ten infected people dying from related complications.
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