Overview
- The Health Department, which began probing a cluster late last week, ordered owners on Sunday to drain, clean and disinfect 10 cooling towers in ZIP codes 10451 and 10456 after initial PCR tests detected Legionella DNA.
- Preliminary PCR testing found bacterial DNA in 10 of 24 towers sampled but cannot show whether the bacteria were alive, so culture tests are now under way and may take up to two weeks to confirm a source.
- Nine people have been diagnosed in the South Bronx cluster and one person has died, with three patients still hospitalized, city officials said.
- High-profile sites on the remediation list include Yankee Stadium and Lincoln Hospital, both of which reported rapid cleaning, and officials said eight of the 10 towers had met the city's 31-day testing rule while two sites did not provide required records.
- Officials urged residents to keep using tap water and air conditioning as usual but to seek medical care for flu-like symptoms, and they expanded multilingual outreach and town halls as part of a stepped-up enforcement effort shaped by this summer's larger Upper East Side outbreak.