The number of deaths in the New York City Legionnaires’ disease outbreak is up to seven.
Advertisement
Legionnaires’ disease is believed to have broken out in the area on July 10.
DNAinfo has rounded up a list of frequently asked questions and the answers.
“We are taking this very seriously”, Dr. Mary Bassett, the city’s health commissioner, told the audience at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, where people waited in line to get in. In that outbreak, 182 people contracted the disease and 29 people died, according to Encyclopedia Britannica. The largest outbreak was in Spain in 2001, when more than 400 people became ill.
“There’s no technical or scientific reason that anyone should ever get sick from the water in their buildings, and yet it happens because we don’t manage the water the way we should”, said William F. McCoy, a longtime Legionnaires’ disease researcher who helped write a new water-management standard for an industry association, the American Society for Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers. It also said water towers were unaffected as well as home air conditioner units.
The current outbreak, in which legionella was found in five out of the 17 cooling towers officials tested, highlighted how haphazard efforts to prevent a well-known disease can be in hotels, hospitals and other large buildings.
The city reached this conclusion because the 81 cases were dispersed over several neighborhoods in the South Bronx and investigators had not found a single common thread among those who were sickened, she said.
But he cautioned that people may have been exposed before the cooling towers were cleaned, meaning more cases of legionnaires’ disease could pop up in the next few days.
The disease causes chills, fever and a cough, and can cause stomach upset and neurological effects. These are symptoms that people should seek care for, especially if they are living in the South Bronx. These usually appear two to 10 days after significant exposure to Legionella bacteria. “But what we do know is they tested some of the the buildings where none of the people walked into, and those buildings also tested positive”. The disease is treatable with antibiotics if caught early.
“All deceased individuals were older adults and had additional underlying medical problems”, the city’s health department said in a statement.
The death toll from the Legionnaires’ disease outbreak in New York City has risen to at least seven, the city’s health department reports, while the total number of cases continues to increase.
Advertisement
The Bronx borough president, Ruben Diaz Jr., said that while the city had responded swiftly and broadly once contamination was reported, he was shocked to discover a lack of measures in place for preventive monitoring of the towers.
