Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration has pledged for days to, in the coming days, release a list of addresses linked to the growing outbreak of Legionnaires’ — a severe form of pneumonia — on the Upper East Side.
The administration hasn’t specified when. That information drop, a transparency step not done in past administrations’ Legionnaires’ outbreaks, may happen as early as Friday.
The anticipation comes as the number of sick people jumped Thursday from 28 to at least 46, including 22 current hospitalizations. The health department has been updating those counts daily around 10 p.m. recently.
No one has died, though NYC City Council Speaker Julie Menin, who has criticized the health department’s handling of the outbreak, says it’s only a matter of time, given the vulnerable senior population in that district. Health officials haven’t released information about the ages or potential underlying conditions of those sick.
The investigation is said to have started with two potentially linked cases at the start of July.
Authorities have said they zeroed in on 19 buildings as possible sources of infection. The addresses of those 19 buildings haven’t been released, though pressure mounted to identify them. They have one thing in common: A rooftop cooling tower that has preliminarily tested positive for the bacteria that causes Legionnaires’ disease.
Even though longer-term testing is required to know if the bacteria detected is dead or alive — meaning harmless or dangerous — health officials said that all 19 buildings have already been ordered to drain and disinfect their towers, out of an abundance of caution.
Menin wants the city to be proactively disinfecting all cooling towers in the area, unless they have tested negative.
“It is shameful to wait, to continue to wait, while we know more and more people every single day are getting sick and potentially can die of this disease,” Menin said Thursday. “We have to prophylactically disinfect and that is what I’m urging the Health Department to do immediately.”
But the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene said disinfecting a cooling tower before a sample has been collected makes it impossible to trace whether that tower was the actual source of illness.
In response to criticism from Menin, the NYC Health Department said in a statement: “Since July 2, the Health Department has been aggressively identifying cooling towers that test positive for the presence of Legionella bacteria and ordering building owners to clean and disinfect. We identified this cluster early and have acted quickly to get the word out to New Yorkers.”
The area of concern involves ZIP codes 10075, 10028 and 10128, covering the entire east side from about 76th Street to 97th Street — an area where both Mamdani and Menin live.
At senior centers just a few blocks outside that zone, city health workers were busy distributing information to East Side residents whose age and underlying health concerns put them at additional risk.
Health officials have said the problem is not the result of any building’s plumbing system, and that anyone who lives in the impacted area can continue to drink tap water, shower, cook, and use their air conditioners.
