As of July 23, five people had died as a result of the outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.
Dozens of buildings have been found to have live legionella bacteria in their cooling towers. The city says it believes the outbreak is under control but several people remain hospitalized.
Tyler Evans is an infectious disease physician and was New York City’s chief medical officer at the time of Covid. He explains who is most at risk here.
“It’s really those that are over the age of 50, particularly over the age of 65 with a number of co-morbidities especially chronic pulmonary diseases,” he said, “and the weakened immune systems, those are the folks that we want to be mindful of.”
The outbreak sickened dozens and left a number of people hospitalized.
The results show that there may not be one source in particular that started the outbreak, and if multiple sources were at fault that may suggest that cooling towers are not being properly maintained.
Evans says frequent testing of every building in the city may strain resources, but targeted testing could be the answer.
“Be a little more surgical about the approach, identify the areas that are most at risk either based upon the type of building or the communities that are living in that building,” said Evans.
Last year, seven people died and more than 100 were sickened during an outbreak in Harlem.
Doctors say this outbreak is atypical — that things like this usually happen in underserved communities where buildings aren’t properly maintained. But they say when the federal government cuts spending on public health, your zip code doesn’t matter.
“If we do invest in public health there are ways to contain these things but again with the dismantling that we’re currently doing we’re really creating a scenario where we’re putting all Americans, this is not a red thing this is not a blue thing, we’re putting all Americans at risk,” he said.
Legionnaires’ disease is treatable but the CDC says 10% of people will die due to complications from the illness.