NYC mayor: Legionnaires’ outbreak has claimed 12 lives

Commonly, patients are exposed to it by inhaling contaminated aerosols from cooling towers, showers, hot tubs, drinking water, etc. Failure to comply would be a misdemeanor.

The outbreak appears to have peaked with no new cases diagnosed over the last four days, but the inspection and cleaning of cooling towers will continue as the city battles the Legionella bacteria, which thrive in warm water, de Blasio said.

“All are in the process of disinfection or have been disinfected already”, he said.

A Brunswick woman who died Thursday at University Hospitals Case Medical Center is a victim of Legionnaires’ disease, a hospital spokeswoman confirmed.

On its website, the state Health Department said it has about fewer than 100 cases are reported each year outside New York City, and “most cases occur as single isolated events”.

One of the issues has been pinpointing buildings that have cooling towers.

While the disease cannot be spread from one person to another, it can be contracted by breathing in the bacteria through a mist or vapor, according to the Centers for Disease Control. The legislation would require all building owners to register their cooling towers with the city. Those towers are used in air conditioning and heating systems and work by pulling heat from a building, then use evaporation to move the heat outside. Every cooling tower in the area has been ordered to be disinfected.

Symptoms can include fever, chills, muscle aches, and cough.

The disease can be detected in sputum and urine tests. People are treated with antibiotics; told to refrain from smoking, being around second-hand smoke and drinking alcohol.

What’s Next for New York?

City officials said yesterday there was no way of knowing whether the same would be true if they tested cooling towers citywide. The Rockland County Health Department says its “closely monitoring the situation” and is contact with state health officials. (Building owners have been asked to voluntarily enroll with the city even before the measure’s passage.).

“This outbreak is a reminder that we have to be vigilant in our efforts to protect public health and ensure that cooling towers on Staten Island – or anywhere in our city – do not become the source of a future outbreak”, Rose said in a statement.

De Blasio said that fast-tracking the proposal wasn’t a bad thing. We hope the information is wrong but did not get solid answers to that question today. Some disparities have been reported about how many sites have detected the bacteria.

“We are dealing with a new set of realities we have never experienced that we have never encountered before in this city”, said de Blasio, who added that the nation’s largest city has had to create “a playbook” on the fly as to how to handle the crisis.