NEW YORK — New York City health officials reported 45 more positive Legionella bacteria tests Tuesday, bringing the number of buildings ordered to disinfect their cooling towers to 76 as the city continues its response to a Legionnaires’ disease outbreak.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art on the Upper East Side is among the properties directed to take action. A museum spokesperson said additional testing is being conducted and emphasized that staff members and visitors are not at risk.
City officials said 57 cooling towers have already been cleaned, with the remaining 19 expected to be completed by Thursday. The city’s list includes several schools, along with a rehabilitation center and a nursing home.
New York City law requires building owners to test cooling towers for Legionella bacteria every 31 days. As part of the outbreak investigation, health officials have been relying on a more sensitive PCR test to detect possible contamination.
Officials said there are no pending cooling tower tests still awaiting results. They also cautioned that a positive Legionella finding in a tower does not automatically mean it is tied to the outbreak; further testing is required to determine any connection.
Latest number of confirmed cases
As of Tuesday night, the outbreak had sickened 63 people, three more than the previous night. Hospitalizations, however, declined from 15 to 12. Cases have been identified in multiple neighborhoods.
Health officials said the pace of new cases has slowed sharply, and more than half of the patients who required hospitalization have since been discharged.
City Council Speaker Julie Menin welcomed the apparent progress, but also renewed criticism of Mayor Zohran Mamdani and the health department.
“From day one I’ve said the health department should be proactively ordering the disinfecting of all towers rather than waiting for test results to come back where more and more people end up contracting Legionnaires’,” Menin said.
Dr. Tyler Evans, CEO of Wellness Equity Alliance, is a former New York City chief medical officer during the COVID-19 pandemic. He says proactively disinfecting all cooling towers just isn’t realistic.
“Particularly under this current administration where public health is really under attack from a federal level, where a number of cities, counties and states are losing funding, losing support, losing legitimacy, it is increasingly more difficult for us to do our jobs,” Evans said.
Councilmember Lynn Schulman says a lack of resources is also the reason why the health department hasn’t been enforcing a new law that mandates buildings to proactively test cooling towers every 31 days during the summer months, despite a significant number of non-compliant buildings.
She says the department of health is focused instead on the current outbreak.
“When we passed the bill the previous administration thought it was a good idea,” Schulman said. “This DOHMH thinks it’s a great bill and we just need to make sure it gets enforced.”
Evans pointed out how unique this outbreak is because almost every other legionella outbreak in the past 40 years has been in underserved Black and brown communities in Harlem and the Bronx.
The hope is since buildings on the Upper East Side have more resources, they will be able to sanitize towers more quickly.
Health officials are urging anyone experiencing pneumonia-like symptoms to seek medical attention.
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