Legionnaires sickens 7, kills 1

BY BRYSE CIALLELLA

City health officials believe one of the Lenox Hill neighborhood's 116 cooling towers is the likely source for an outbreak of Legionnaires' disease that has killed one person and sickened six others since June 5. All six people sickened either live or work in the neighborhood, as was the person who died, officials said.

“There have been no new cases in the last five days,” the city's health commissioner, Dr. Mary Bassett, said Monday night during a community meeting that addressed the outbreak. “For us in the health department, that is heartening but it's too soon to tell you not to be vigilant.”

City health officials urged those who live or work in the Lenox Hill area to be alert for symptoms of infection.

“Right now, the most important thing we can do personally, is be alert to the symptoms, we want to get the message out about seeking care early. … Symptoms include fever, cough, headache, muscle aches – flu-like symptoms,” Bassett said.

Legionnaires' disease is a serious lung infection, which is caused by inhaling water droplets or aerosolized mist containing Legionella bacteria, which propagates in warm water.

The Health Department tested all 116 cooling towers within a half-kilometer radius of where all seven persons living or working were infected, a department official said. Testing was concluded Friday, June 16, and samples were sent to public and private laboratories. Culture results are expected by the end of the month, the department said in a press release. Health care providers have been alerted to the outbreak.

The department also ordered several building owners to increase the use of bacteria-killing biocides or to take other measures to mitigate bacteria growth.

Bassett assuaged concerns from some who attended the meeting, at the Lenox Hill Neighborhood House on East 70th Street, who expressed concern about tap water.

“Shower, bath, wash your hands, drink your water, we are not concerned about the water pipes in buildings, what categorizes this cluster is a neighborhood exposure,” she said. “We have no evidence of any clustering within buildings. We are not concerned about people drinking the water, that's why we have a big pitcher of tap water up here and we're drinking it.”

Bassett said the department suspected an outbreak when computer algorithms indicated that a number of people in Lenox Hill had Legionnaires' symptoms. Health officials then conducted interviews with those who had fallen ill.

“We interview them and try to figure out where they might overlap, because that means that we might come up with a single location, a common source. When we did this for the seven individuals that I mentioned, all that they shared was a neighborhood, a geography,” she said. “They didn't share a building or a place where they all did their shopping. All they shared was a geography and when we see that sort of pattern, we begin looking at the cooling towers in that area.”

People older than 50 are most at risk of contracting Legionnaires', particularly if they smoke, have chronic lung disease or weakened immune systems. The seven people affected range in age from 65 to the person in their 90s. Symptoms usually appear two to 10 days after exposure, according the city Health Department. The infection, which is not contagious, is treated with antibiotics.

Data from the federal Centers for Disease Control points to a more than fourfold increase in reported cases of the disease since 2000, when about .4 cases per 100,000 people were reported. That increased to about 1.8 cases per 100,000 people in 2015.

In New York City, 269 cases were reported last year, down from 428 in 2015, according to Assembly Member Rebecca Seawright's office