Health Department Responds to Legionnaires' Outbreak

**Brian Lehrer** (0:10)
Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now we'll end today's show mostly on the Upper East Side, where the city is at least two weeks into an outbreak of Legionnaires' disease. The list of buildings where a cooling tower tested positive more than doubled overnight to 76, and now includes more non-residential famous name places, the Met, the Guggenheim was already known, Whole Foods, prep schools like Spence and Dalton. So what does that actually mean for people who live and work up there, or who might just be passing through to go to a doctor's office or something? There's also a second summer bug going around, a stomach parasite called cyclosporiasis.
I think I said that right. We'll get to a little of that too.
We have the New York City Health Commissioner, Dr. Alister Martin, technically Commissioner of New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Commissioner Martin, welcome back to WNYC. Thanks so much for coming on for this.

**Alister Martin** (1:12)
Grateful to be here with you, Brian.

**Brian Lehrer** (1:16)
With the list of buildings with a positive tower, more than doubling basically overnight from 31, which a number we gave yesterday to 76, and it now includes the MET. But you're also telling people there's no added risk from being inside those buildings. Help us in our square that.

**Alister Martin** (1:35)
Absolutely. Let's first talk about where we are in this investigation, Brian. So this all kicked off on July 2nd, about two weeks ago, as you've mentioned, where we had our first two confirmed cases. The good news is, Brian, we caught it early, we moved quickly, and we have not stopped since. Where we are right now is fewer people are getting sick each day. Brian, over half of the people who are hospitalized have been discharged, and that epi curve is resolving. For folks who are visual learners, can go to our website, nyc.gov slash Legionnaire disease, and they will see, for instance, last year we had, last 24 hours, we had one reported case. Now, let's talk about the buildings.
So you're exactly right. There are 76 buildings that we have named. These are locations, addresses that our testing has concluded are PCR positive. Let me break down what that means.
PCR essentially gives us the answer of whether or not there's bacterial DNA in that cooling tower, that is the Legionella bacteria that causes Legionnaire's disease. Now, here's the problem. It has a limitation. It doesn't let us know if that DNA is from live bacteria, which is harmful, or dead bacteria, which is not harmful. So many of those buildings, Brian, of those 76, are going to end up not having live Legionella bacteria. In effect, will not be harming folks, but the very small proportion that are could be the ones that are causing this cluster. And that's why it's been so important for us to move quickly, more aggressively than we ever have, to address this.

**Brian Lehrer** (3:19)
Listener asks, is there any danger in being outside in the air near these buildings?

**Alister Martin** (3:27)
So for the listeners, one way to think about this is the 76 buildings that we've released.
Once those buildings follow through and comply, do the drainage, the cleaning and disinfecting, we can confidently say that those buildings are some of the cleanest buildings in the Upper East Side. And we're happy to be able to report that 57 of those buildings, the majority of the 76, have already complied. And we're grateful for the work of the landlords and cooling towers who have gotten that done quickly. You know, our first orders to remediate went out on July 4th. And we've had a really good response so far. And we expect that response to continue from our landlords. Now.

**Brian Lehrer** (4:14)
But in the meantime, and if you don't know which building, which buildings have been remediated?

**Alister Martin** (4:21)
Well, the important part is for folks who are in those three zip codes. If you live there, if you work there, if you reside there, if you have symptoms of cough, fever, shortness of breath, to please contact your doctor. Now, the most important thing, Brian, is the vast majority of people who are exposed to Legionnaire's Bacteria, do not actually go on to convert into having Legionnaires' disease. There are a couple of groups that we are concerned about, right? Folks who are elderly, folks who smoke, folks who have chronic comorbidities like lung disease, heart disease, kidney disease. But again, the vast majority of folks who are exposed do not go on to develop Legionnaire's disease.

**Brian Lehrer** (4:57)
Is that a yes or a no on being at risk if you're just walking outside by one of these buildings that's still contaminated?