August 4, 2015: New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio holds up a chart documenting the cases of Legionnaires’ disease while speaking to reporters.
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City health officials have said the drinking water supply is unaffected by the disease outbreak and that fountains, shower heads and pools are safe as well. (None are related to the current outbreak in the Bronx.) That’s on track with previous years: There were 199 cases last year, 241 cases in 2013 and 173 in 2012. Cooling towers have been around for decades.
“While it’s clearly a severe outbreak in the Bronx, this is a statewide issue”, State Health Commissioner Howard Zucker said at a news conference. The outbreak has been going on for about three weeks and has been labeled the largest in the city’s history.
New York had not previously attempted to list all of the estimated 2,500 cooling towers within its five boroughs. As of the moment the real culprit that triggered the outbreak that started last month is still unknown. The state is also offering free testing for building owners with cooling towers or evaporative coolers, which are sometimes called “swamp coolers”. The team tested some units from the affected zone plus other locations in the Bronx.
So far one hundred cases have been reported diagnosed with Legionnaires’ disease and 10 have died in the outbreak.
Rouse had been hospitalized at Beth Israel Hospital and died there, even though doctors were sure he’d recover-his family members say the Health Department did not look into his death, even though they repeatedly asked officials to do so.
Symptoms of Legionnaires’ disease include cough, shortness of breath, high fever, headache and muscle aches, according to the CDC.
Andrew Cuomo dispatched over a hundred trained officials in the Bronx Saturday to start widespread testing for Legionella bacteria in water tower cooling systems.
Legionnaires’ disease is caused by exposure to the Legionella bacteria.
Mayor Invoice De Blasio burdened Thursday that the mandated exams are a precautionary measure and the town is “assured that we’ve already disinfected the supply of this outbreak”.
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The first case of Legionnaires’ disease was in 1976, when 200 people contracted the disease while attending an American Legion convention at a Philadelphia hotel.
