The CDC estimates that 8,000 to 18,000 people are hospitalized annually with the disease in the U.S. Officials at a Cleveland hospital said Friday that a 53-year-old Ohio woman had died from the disease a day earlier. So far, the outbreak seems to have already peaked, what with no new cases reported during the course of the last few days.
Advertisement
Richard Harbus/for New York Daily News State fire protection specialist Christopher Whitby tries on a gas mask before beginning to test cooling towers in the Bronx.
Officials identified a total of 39 buildings in the impacted area of the South Bronx with cooling towers, but de Blasio said the city was very confident that the outbreak originated from one of the original five infected sites: Lincoln Hospital, Concourse Plaza, the Opera House Hotel, Streamline Plastic Co. and a Verizon office building. The disease is a form of pneumonia caused by breathing in contaminated mist.
Officials said that all but one of the 12 fatalities was more than 40 years old and all of them had underlying health problems. However, there is no comprehensive list of buildings with cooling waters in New York which makes the task a bit more challenging.
De Blasio said there is no evidence that there have been new Legionnaires’ cases since August. 3 and that the new cases could be attributed to a lag time in reporting. Little has been done to address the safety risks of air-conditioning cooling towers found in many large buildings.
Also included in the proposed law are quarterly inspections, cleaning and disinfection of city cooling towers, and annual certification of those towers, de Blasio said.
New York’s mayor has announced new measures on inspecting and maintaining cooling towers.
Four sites outside the impact zone and not related to the outbreak tested positive.
Whereas de Blasio spoke at Metropolis Corridor, Gov. Andrew Cuomo was holding his personal information convention at his New York Metropolis workplace on the exact same topic but delivering totally different details about the variety of buildings the place legionella micro organism had been found. Staffers with each males didn’t say why the officers held separate occasions. Landlords and building managers interested in getting their cooling towers inspected can take advantage of the free Legionella tests the state is offering until October.
“We’ve got been aggressive”, Cuomo stated concerning the state’s response.
“All levels of government have been in close coordination and now we are turning our attention to ensuring we can handle any such outbreak in the future and, in fact, prevent any such outbreak”, de Blasio said at a press conference on Monday.
Advertisement
De Blasio made the statement as two more residents died of Legionnaires’ disease on Monday in the borough of Bronx, bringing the death toll to 12.
