The Legionnaire’s disease has continued to infect people living in the South Bronx despite efforts to stop the outbreak from spreading, New York City officials announced. 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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Cuomo has also deployed New York State Health Commissioner Howard Zucker to go to the Bronx to work with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in investigating the outbreak. Their mission is to speed up the collection and testing of cooling tower water samples.
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.
State officials said that by the end of the day, at least 100 cooling tower sites will have been tested in five other areas of the Bronx, including the Highbridge, Hunts Point, Mott Haven, Fordham and Mount Eden sections.
It’s a form of pneumonia caused by breathing in mist contaminated with the Legionella bacteria.
There were 301 cases reported in 2013 and 225 in 2014 in the city and generally, 5 to 10 percent of cases are fatal, said a press release sent from the Mayor’s office. They were all older adults with underlying health problems.
Health officials have said that they are confident the peak of the outbreak has passed and that there should be a dramatic decrease in the frequency of diagnoses.
Officials say the outbreak has been traced to cooling towers. Between 8,000 to 18,000 people are reportedly infected with the disease in the U.S. annually. Remediation was completed at each of the locations, all in the South Bronx.
Four or more federal agencies including CDC, Veterans Health Administration (VHA), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and OSHA have together come up with guidelines for preventing the disease, which usually sets in up to ten days after exposure to its bacteria.
An outbreak occurred in July in New York City.
The respiratory disease is not communicable from person to person, however it spreads if one gets in touch with the bacterium Legionella.
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Symptoms typically include fever, chills, coughs and muscle aches.
