5 Dead, 82 Sick as Deadly Legionnaires' Outbreak Hits New York City

[00:00:05]I'd like to provide an update on the Legionnaires cases reported on the Upper East Side.

[00:00:11]We have identified 82 cases of Legionnaires disease in association with this cluster.

[00:00:16]Five New Yorkers have lost their lives in connection with the disease. I'm heartbroken by these losses and send my deepest condolences to their loved ones.

[00:00:25]Our city mourns alongside you.

[00:00:27]56 New Yorkers have been discharged from the hospital after receiving treatment.

[00:00:31]13 people contracted the disease but were never hospitalized. Eight people remain in the hospital at this time. We wish them a swift recovery.

[00:00:40]To all concerned New Yorkers, I want to reiterate that Legionnaires disease is not communicable from person to person.

[00:00:47]All New Yorkers can continue to drink water from the tap, to bathe, to shower, to cook, and to use air conditioners at home, no matter what zip code they call their own.

[00:00:55]Furthermore, we believe that we have now eliminated the source of the initial cluster. There has been no one with new symptoms reported in more than 10 days and no new diagnoses in a week.

[00:01:06]I want to thank the quick and aggressive actions taken by our New York City Health Department. While in the past, the city began investigations after three confirmed cases in a tight time frame and geographic area, the department acted at the earliest indication of a potential cluster, launching our investigation on Thursday, July 2nd, at which point there were just two confirmed cases. We immediately mobilized to test all cooling towers in the investigation zone. When any test came back positive, we ordered the respective building owners to fully clean and disinfect their cooling towers and all have complied. This is the most aggressive remediation and enforcement strategy that our city has ever taken to eliminate the source of Legionella bacteria. And there is always more work to be done.

[00:01:47]Going forward, the New York City Health Department will continue to report test results and inspect cooling towers, enforce rigorous maintenance and oversight regulations, and hold non-compliant building owners accountable.

[00:01:58]>> These are essentially pieces of the building which are on top of skyscrapers buildings that essentially regulate the temperature of cooling systems, things like central air or refrigeration.

[00:02:13]Now, what happens is in those cooling towers, the water there can serve as a breeding ground for that bacteria. And when it's particularly hot, like it has been the last couple of days, um this can serve as a as a place for that bacteria to essentially multiply.

[00:02:31]And when those cooling towers kick into overdrive, more of that mist is spread out.

[00:02:38]>> Previous administration procedure had been that we would wait for the results of culture.

[00:02:45]And that would mean 2 weeks. We made the decision to do both culture tests and PCR tests. So, that meant that we could actually test immediately, disinfect any of the cooling towers that came back, and then additionally wait for the culture results. As you've mentioned, there are four additional culture results that came back positive beyond the PCRs. And the other point here is that we know that Legionnaires' is something that has affected our city over many, many years.

[00:03:11]And we are both trying to stop this cluster in the moment and ensure that we are not weakening our ability to stop it in the future. And when I sat with public health experts, what I was told time and again is that if we were to do a blanket disinfectant of every single cooling tower across the Upper East Side, that would weaken those cooling towers' ability to protect against Legionnaires' in the years to come. And so, we want to make sure that everything we're doing gives people both the safety and the public health they deserve and the confidence that this isn't going to be something that returns.

[00:03:44]>> Community clusters are caused by cooling towers being the source.

[00:03:50]>> The good news is we are in a very reassuring position. We feel confident that we've eliminated that source.

[00:03:57]You know, when we look at the data, the data demonstrates that the last new diagnosis of Legionnaires disease was on July 15th, so about a week ago as you heard the mayor say.

[00:04:07]And then in terms of the last person to develop symptoms, they did so over a week ago, over 10 days ago. And so we feel fairly confident when when you also add in the emergency room data.

[00:04:21]We're not seeing any concerning spikes or signals.

[00:04:24]Our focus has been and continues to be on accountability.

[00:04:29]Accountability, identifying the cooling tower owner or owners that's at the source of this and holding them accountable to the full extent of the law. Now turning to Speaker Menendez's point.

[00:04:41]Here's what would happen if we blanket disinfected.

[00:04:46]Number one, as you've heard from the mayor, every time we do this biocide treatment, it actually does degrade the cooling towers and thus in the future allows them to potentially harbor more Legionella bacteria. Now we're it's always about finding the right sort of happy medium, but that's the first. The second is had we blanket disinfected from the beginning, we wouldn't be able to actually get the samples.

[00:05:11]And we need the samples to know what caused this and then that will give us an opportunity to learn.

[00:05:27]We started with 183 cooling towers.

[00:05:32]76 of which were PCR positive. Let me explain what that means, right? So the PCR positive towers mean that we find evidence of DNA of Legionella in that tower. Now the the DNA could be live or it could be dead, right? The only version that can hurt you is the live Legionella bacteria, right? So, we now have a preliminary list of 34 cooling towers that have that live Legionella bacteria.

[00:05:57]Now, the next step is quite frankly my favorite. This is the nerdiest step, and this is the whole genome sequence step.

[00:06:05]We take the bacteria that we found in those 34 towers, and we identify the samples from our patients, and we try and make a match. And what we typically find in these clusters is that there is one tower. Last time in Harlem, there were two. My expectation is that we're going to have a similar pattern here, where there will likely be one tower, or perhaps two, that actually do have the same DNA pattern as the one that caused this uh, this cluster. Why are there so many?

[00:06:35]I think this is a there's a question underneath that question, which is why are there so many, right, bacterial culture positives?

[00:06:41]Um, as you heard us say earlier, this is a bacteria which is ubiquitous. It's everywhere. And the vast majority of these towers have infinitesimal small trace amounts of Legionella bacteria. Some have enough to cause a cluster. Our job now, now that we've eliminated the source, is to identify specifically which tower caused this cluster. So, that's that's the work ahead of us.

[00:08:04]>> Mhm.