New York City health officials confirmed Sunday night that a third person has died from the Legionnaire’s Disease outbreak on the Upper East Side.<\/p>\n
“We have identified 74 cases of Legionnaires\u2019 disease associated with the cluster, 8 people remain hospitalized, 51 have been discharged from the hospital, and three people have sadly died,” said Health Commissioner Dr. Alister F. Martin. “Out of respect for their personal privacy, we will not be releasing any additional information about their passing.”<\/p>\n
The first death was announced Friday, and the second was announced Saturday.<\/p>\n
“While we continue to investigate cases and closely monitor those in the hospital, we have not identified anyone with new symptoms for more than a week, and we are not seeing any concerning trends in emergency department surveillance data,” Martin said in a statement.<\/p>\n
Adding to hopes that the outbreak may have peaked, Martin reiterated, “We believe the source of exposure has likely been eliminated due to our aggressive remediation and enforcement efforts. We will continue inspecting every cooling tower that tested positive and will hold accountable any owner who fails to comply with our public health laws.”<\/p>\n
Legionnaires\u2019 disease is a form of severe pneumonia caused by a type of bacteria that thrives in warm, stagnant water. Health officials have focused on testing cooling towers that are part of air conditioning systems for large buildings. Property owners have been ordered to drain and disinfect towers where there has been a positive test result.<\/p>\n
Health officials have not pinpointed a source for the current outbreak.<\/p>\n
Legionnaires\u2019 disease is treatable but 10% of people will die due to complications from the illness, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.<\/p>\n
Last year, seven people died and more than 100 were sickened during an outbreak in Harlem.<\/p>\n
“We advise anyone who has spent time in the three affected ZIP codes \u2014 10028, 10075, 10128 \u2014 to seek medical attention if they develop flu-like symptoms, as Legionnaires\u2019 disease symptoms can appear up to 14 days after exposure,” the statement added. “We will continue to keep New Yorkers updated on the details of this investigation. The most up-to-date information is available on the Health Department\u2019s website<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New York City health officials confirmed Sunday night that a third person has died from the Legionnaire’s Disease…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":288860,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[75,9,56,63,65,64],"class_list":["post-300412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-manhattan","tag-new-york","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=300412"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300412\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/288860"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=300412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=300412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=300412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}