The health department said a city hospital and a city-managed construction site were the origin of this summer’s Legionnaires’ disease outbreak in Harlem that has so far infected 114 people, hospitalized 90 and killed seven.
During a virtual press briefing, officials described their process for identifying the source of the outbreak by testing the genes of Legionella found in cooling towers, which help circulate water through air conditioning systems and can become hotbeds for the bacteria without proper maintenance.
“Both buildings have been fully remediated and have sanitized their cooling towers,” Health Commissioner Michelle Morse said. “We are working with both buildings to require them to develop long-term management programs to protect the health of Harlem residents.”
Harlem Hospital at 506 Lenox Ave. was the first building identified as a source of the outbreak. The hospital was also linked to an 2021 outbreak that hospitalized more than a dozen people.
Don Weiss, a former city health official who helped coordinate past responses to infectious disease outbreaks, was critical of the fact that Harlem Hospital was once again at the center of an outbreak’s origins.
“They should’ve been keeping a really close eye on that,” Weiss said. “You should be way above the testing requirements to make sure you’re never again showing up on the news.”
The second building was a construction site for a public health lab at 40 West 137th St. overseen by the NYC Economic Development Corporation and the construction contractor Skanska USA.
According to publicly available health department data, the hospital had been in compliance with rules requiring it to submit Legionella testing samples every three months. Its most recent sample before the outbreak was submitted in June.
A previous Gothamist analysis found that the rate of city inspections for cooling towers has been declining since the regulations were first implemented. After an increase in inspections immediately after the COVID-19 pandemic, numbers of inspections dropped again starting in 2022, after Mayor Eric Adams took office. The Department of Health and Mental Hygiene attributed the drop to staffing shortages.
Morse, the health commissioner, said the buildings were identified through matching genetic samples from both the cooling towers and the people who were sickened.
During the briefing, Deputy Commissioner Corinne Schiff, who oversees the Division of Environmental Health, said she didn’t know whether the construction site had conducted regular Legionella testing but that the department would investigate the site’s testing history.
According to public data, however, there are no records of Legionella testing or city inspections for the construction site.
Chris Boyd, a former assistant commissioner at the health department who helped write new regulations for cooling towers in the wake of a 2015 outbreak that killed 16 people, said this outbreak was completely preventable.
“The health department is masking the fact that this is not a naturally occurring phenomena,” he said. “It only occurs in systems that are not managed properly.”
Following Friday’s briefing, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a current mayoral candidate, called on the state Department of Health to conduct an independent investigation of the city’s handling of the outbreak.
“With the source of this outbreak now tied to a city-run facility, it is all the more important that an independent review be undertaken to ensure accountability, transparency, and public trust,” Cuomo wrote in a statement.
In response to the outbreak, Morse said the department will raise fines for building owners who fail to regularly test for Legionella bacteria. The department will also require building owners to test every 30 days instead of the currently required 90 days, she said.
Additionally, Morse said the department will also try to hire more water ecologists to address the current staff shortage, but she did not provide details on whether the budget for those staff vacancies would be increased.
A Gothamist analysis found that the health department lost more than a third of its cooling tower inspectors in the past three years, despite a boost in funding for the unit in the department that conducts the inspections.
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