New York governor to send inspectors to NYC after deadly illness

On Sunday, Cuomo further tweaked de Blasio, saying he would make sure to protect the residents of the South Bronx (and implying that de Blasio had not done so).

At Saturday’s press conference, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that the Legionnaires’ disease has been contained. This effort is continuing to be done in close coordination with the work of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and New York City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.

“This is a disease that tends to repeat itself and at the end of this, I’m going to have reforms for a statewide system that changes everything”, Cuomo said to reporters as he prepared to march in the Dominican Day Parade in Manhattan.

The governor said Sunday that he wants a registry of cooling towers as well as regulations requiring building owners to inspect their towers and treat them with certain chemicals.

“We took charge on day one”.

According to ABC7NY, the following buildings in New York had their cooling towers scrubbed after testing positive for the virus: Streamline Plastics Company, the Opera House Hotel, Concourse Plaza Mall, Lincoln Hospital and a Verizon office at 117 Street.

The outbreak has been centered in the South Bronx, with 108 reported cases of Legionnaires and 10 deaths (the city has emphasized that the deceased had preexisting medical condition that made them more vulnerable to the pneumonia-like disease). Hospital staff said they followed strict guidelines on keep the cooling towers.

De Blasio dismissed the criticism some have levied at his administration for being slow to initially react to the outbreak, and said the city was compiling a list of cooling towers citywide so it could respond more quickly to any future outbreak.

De Blasio last week announced that NYC will start to inspect cooling towers.

The city has also ordered that within the next 14 days, all buildings with cooling towers that haven’t been tested in the last 30 days be tested and any towers found contaminated be disinfected. “This expanded testing will also provide the state valuable data as to the amount of legionella in systems across the state and any potential dangers in surrounding neighborhoods in the Bronx or other parts of the state”.

“This is an open breakfast”, Espaillat told New York True.

The Legionella bacteria that caused the outbreak was traced to five different water-cooling towers in the South Bronx. Gov. Andrew Cuomo said the teams began working Saturday in the Bronx.

“We’ve never seen a situation like this before in New York City or, of course, these efforts would have been in place in advance”, the mayor said.