NYC health department narrows source of Legionella outbreak to 56 Upper East Side cooling towers
Culture testing identified 56 Upper East Side buildings with live Legionella bacteria in their cooling towers, narrowing the search for the source of a Legionnaires' disease outbreak that has sickened 89 people.
The New York City Health Department reported that 56 buildings on the Upper East Side have live Legionella bacteria in their cooling-tower systems, based on a second round of culture testing. The tests, which are more precise than the earlier rapid PCR screening, were conducted on towers in three ZIP codes where the outbreak has been concentrated.
"We are narrowing it down," said Chantal Gomez, a spokesperson for the health department. She added that the live-bacteria samples will be compared with patient isolates before officials can confirm the outbreak’s origin.
The department collected samples from all cooling towers in the affected area, sent them to laboratories and is awaiting results from twelve towers still pending analysis. Officials noted that building owners drained their towers after the initial PCR tests and no new cases have been reported since.
City regulations require owners to perform culture tests every 31 days and the health department to inspect towers annually, but compliance has been uneven. As of mid-June, 56% of towers had been inspected in the past year, and 82% had submitted test results by late July. Among the 56 towers that tested positive, just over half had been inspected in the prior year.
Council Speaker Julie Menin has criticized the city administration for insufficient transparency and called for disinfection of all towers in the affected ZIP codes.