The boutique hotel and former theater’s cooling tower had a strain of bacteria with the same “DNA fingerprint” as 25 samples from patients, some of whom have died, Bassett and Deputy Health Commissioner Dr. Jay Varma said at a news conference at the city’s public health laboratory in Kips Bay.
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The city health department is still trying to determine how the Opera House Hotel’s cooling tower became the source of the outbreak. All were cleaned. City officials said Legionella is spread through the mist expelled from cooling towers at the top of buildings, and those who contract the disease breathe it in.
Bassett also announced the incubation period has ended and “the outbreak is over”.
The latest Legionnaires’ outbreak, which was discovered in July, has been the worst the city has ever experienced.
Legionnaires’ disease, of course, is nothing new, and there’s certainly no guarantee it won’t return somewhere else. “The quick and thorough reaction from local and state authorities likely prevented many others from developing Legionnaires’ disease”.
On Tuesday, Mayor de Blasio has signed a new legislation, which aims to prevent any further Legionnaires’ outbreak. A widespread and mandatory cooling tower testing effort found 14 cooling towers testing positive for Legionella bacteria within that zone.
“Cooling towers have been implicated in several outbreaks of Legionnaire’s Disease in recent years”.
Inspection and Certification: All cooling towers must be inspected within the next 30 days, and thereafter every 90 days.
The Opera House Hotel’s building is more than a century old and once housed performances by Harry Houdini, the Marx Brothers and George Burns. A City Hall spokeswoman said officials had been communicating with the hotel but noted patient privacy laws.
But on Thursday, the hotel, which was open, issued a statement saying that city and state health officials “have kept us fully informed” and pointed out that a test Wednesday was negative for the Legionnaires’-causing bacteria.
A representative for the hotel didn’t immediately return a call seeking comment.
The source of the outbreak was the Opera House Hotel cooling tower, officials said in a news release.
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Health Commissioner Mary Bassett was expected to provide new details during an afternoon news briefing Thursday.
