City health officials said the worst of the Legionnaires’ disease outbreak on the Upper East Side has passed.
But now, City Council members, including Speaker Julie Menin, are scrutinizing the Mamdani administration’s handling of it.
What You Need To Know
Five people have died from Legionnaires’ disease so far
City health officials said the source of the Upper East Side outbreak has likely been identified
City Council Speaker Julie Menin will hold an oversight hearing in September on the city’s “insufficient” handling of the outbreak
Menin held a news conference, criticizing the city’s response to the outbreak as “insuffient” and planned an oversight hearing in September. Lawmakers are also planning a package of bills that would focus on public education around Legionnaires’ disease and set up an information hotline.
Afterwards, on Tuesday evening, the city Department of Health updated the number of Legionnaires’ cases confirmed: 82 cases identified, five people dead, and eight people still in the hospital.
Ida Goldstein said her husband, Robert, recently died on Legionnaires’ disease. She recounted the day he fell ill.
“I call him ‘Bobby darling,’ that how’s how I address him every day of my life, ‘What’s wrong?’ He didn’t look good,” Goldstein said.
Robert Goldstein died on July 17. He was 88 years old.
“An invisible monster, a vapor, that just went into his lungs and just took him away from me,” she said.
Goldstein recounted her story to reporters alongside her attorney Ronald Katter, who’s planning to sue a building owner. The building that could be linked to Robert Goldstein’s death has yet to be identified.
“The intended action will target the owner of an Upper East Side building who failed to properly maintain its rooftop cooling tower and unleashed a toxic plume of aerosolled Legionella bacteria into the neighborhood,” Katter said.
Last week, city health officials said the source of the exposure across three Upper East Side ZIP codes had likely been eliminated.
“We want to ensure the city is better prepared when it comes to this. This is something that affects New York City every single summer, it is not a surprise,” Menin told reporters.
A spokeswoman for the health department defended its handling of the outbreak in a statement, emphasizing that an investigation was quickly launched after two confirmed cases.
“We believe that through our aggressive strategy of testing and remediation, we have eliminated the source of exposure,” Department of Health and Mental Hygiene spokeswoman Chantal Garcia said in a statement. “We will learn more as our investigation unfolds and look forward to updating our existing policies and procedures to prevent future clusters.”
Menin said she found communication lacking.
“For many residents of the east side, they waited over a week to find out if there was a positive test case in their building,” she said.
Lawmakers also said cooling towers should have been drained and disinfected, without wait.
“Once the health department had indicated to us that they have identified an epicenter, why not start proactively disinfecting several weeks ago those towers,” Menin said.
The city health department waits for a test that helps identify locations with Legionella bacteria.