The Guggenheim Museum is one of 31 Upper East Side properties where officials say Legionella bacteria has been detected amid a Legionnaires’ disease investigation, authorities said Friday.
For the first time, the city Health Department published a preliminary roster of buildings with cooling towers that tested positive for Legionella, the bacteria responsible for the potentially fatal illness.
The Guggenheim, located at 1071 Fifth Ave., along with owners of 18 other affected properties, has already cleaned and disinfected the contaminated water-cooling towers, the agency said.
The remaining 12 buildings were directed to finish the intensive cleaning process by Saturday, though it was not immediately known whether all met the deadline.
The complete list of affected buildings is:
The cluster of buildings was screened through a polymerase chain reaction test — which cannot indicate whether the bacteria are alive or dead.
Only live bacteria can cause the potentially devastating illness.
It’s also still not clear which building could have been the source of the outbreak.
The investigation will continue through the weekend — meaning more buildings could be added to the infected list.
It takes two weeks for the test results to be returned.
At least 46 people have been diagnosed with Legionnaires, including 22 who remain hospitalized.
The city so far has tested 183 cooling towers on the Upper East Side since the July 2 outbreak, officials said.
More than half of the neighborhood’s cooling towers had been dinged by health officials during their latest inspections — including some who failed to perform regular monitoring and cleaning and failing to submit Legionella test results to the health department, as required by law, records show.
Health officials emphasized that it is safe to use air conditioners and cooling centers in the neighborhood despite the outbreak.
