UPPER EAST SIDE, Manhattan (PIX11) – The NYC Health Department said all 31 Upper East Side apartment buildings that tested positive for Legionella bacteria have now been disinfected.
However, it is not known which of those cooling towers had enough of the live bacteria to have caused the spread of the disease.
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At a virtual town hall Monday night, Dr. Alister Martin, the NYC Health Commissioner, said that it may take several more days or may never be known.
Martin said it requires a sickened patient to give a sample, and then they do DNA sequencing to compare it to bacteria that was collected from the cooling tower.
Martin said, “We take the sputum of the patient who is sick with Legionella, Legionnaires’ disease and we do whole genome sequencing; we actually sequence the entire DNA. We then go back to that cooling tower result; sometimes we’re able to identify an exact match.”
On Monday night, the City Department of Health updated its website that as of July 13, there are: 60 total cases, 15 currently hospitalized, 34 discharged, 11 not hospitalized, and no deaths.
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