Deadly Legionnaires' Outbreak Traced To Harlem High-Rise: City

HARLEM, NY — A Legionnaires' Disease outbreak that sickened dozens of people in Harlem and Washington Heights, killing one, is under control and officials have identified its source, the city Health Department announced Tuesday.

The city hasn't seen any additional cases of Legionnaires' Disease in three weeks and has decided to close its investigation of the outbreak, Health Department Commissioner Mary Basset said Tuesday. After testing cooling towers in the area of the outbreak, the strain of Legionella bacteria that sickened 27 people matched a strain found in the cooling tower of the Sugar Hill Project, a high-rise building on St. Nicholas Avenue near West 155th Street.

The Sugar Hill Project cleaned and disinfected its cooling tower on July 13 in compliance with the city, officials said.

"I am relieved that the cluster of Legionnaires’ disease in lower Washington Heights is over," Bassett said in a statement. “After an extensive investigation, the Health Department has identified the cooling tower at the Sugar Hill Project as the most likely source of the cluster. "

"In 2015, we worked with the City Council to create the nation’s most comprehensive cooling tower registry and regulations. During this investigation, the registry allowed the Health Department to quickly identify all cooling towers in the affected neighborhood, review their inspection records, obtain samples for rapid laboratory testing and conduct an immediate visual inspection of the tower."

The city Health Department first notified the public about the outbreak on July 11 and said that eight people had contracted the disease. City officials referred to the outbreak area as "lower Washington Heights," but did not provide any specific geographic details of that area until Tuesday. A Health Department spokeswoman told Patch in July that the department does not disclose the specific locations of outbreaks.

A majority of the 27 people who were sickened during the outbreak, including the person who died, were older than 50, officials said. Of the 25 people who were hospitalized, two were never admitted and treated on an outpatient basis and the remaining 23 have been discharged, officials said.

The Legionnaires' outbreak spurred calls from local politicians for greater transparency and more severe punishments when buildings fail cooling tower inspections. The current fine for a first-time violation is $2,000 and the fines for subsequent violations can not exceed $5,000 the councilman said. For failed inspections of towers that lead to a deadly outbreak of Legionnaires' Disease the fine is no more than $10,000.

City Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez, who represents the Washington Heights and Inwood neighborhoods, renewed that call Tuesday.

"I thank Commissioner Bassett and her team for their diligence in monitoring, addressing and identifying the source of this recent Legionnaires’ outbreak," Rodriguez said. "Each subsequent outbreak has been small and we come away with lessons to prevent them. I look forward to working with the Health Department and my colleagues in Council to make cooling tower inspection results much more accessible to the public and increasing penalties for failed inspections."

Legionnaires' symptoms include fever, cough, chills, muscle aches, headache, fatigue, loss of appetite, confusion and diarrhea and generally surface two to 10 days after contact with the bacteria Legionella. Common culprits in the spread of the Legionella bacteria include cooling towers, whirlpool spas, hot tubs, humidifiers, hot water tanks, and evaporative condensers of large air-conditioning systems, the Department of Health said. The city sees an average of 200 to 500 cases of Legionnaires' Disease each year, health officials said.

The disease cannot be spread from one person to another, the Department of Health said in a statement.

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