The Legionnaires’ disease outbreak on the Upper East Side has now sickened 59 people — with the dangerous bacteria also found for the first time across the park, in a posh Upper West Side building.
The majority of the nearly five dozen people sickened — or 48 victims — have had to be hospitalized for the potentially deadly disease’s severe form of pneumonia, according to the city Department of Health.
The latest count of those stricken in the city is up from 46 on Saturday, with 22 of those needing to enter a hospital for treatment, officials said.
No deaths have been reported in the latest local outbreak — which even ensnared the famed Guggenheim Museum — but more people are expected to test positive in the coming days, officials said.
All of the victims have been on the Upper East Side.
But the hot-water system at The Ardsley at 320 Central Park West — where one-bedrooms rent for close to $1 million — just tested positve for Legionella bacteria, which causes the disease, officials said. The Upper West Side building has since disinfected its system, according to the West Side Rag.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani said at an unrelated press conference Monday that the positive test at The Ardsley should not be a cause for concern:
“There is no cooling tower of this building on the Upper West Side,” he said. “And the reason for that focus is typically those towers are the cause of this outbreak.”
The latest outbreak is being investigated as a “community cluster” affecting the Upper East Side neighborhoods of Carnegie Hill and Yorkville. The outbreak was first reported July 2.
When there are multiple people sickened with Legionnaires’ disease in a given neighborhood, common sources of exposure include cooling towers, hot tubs and spray fountains, the city said.
Testing of the city’s roughly 183 cooling towers in the affected area was completed last week, and 31 buildings – including the Guggenheim – were found to have the bacteria that causes Legionnaire’s disease.
All 31 buildings have confirmed they completed the cleaning and disinfection of their cooling towers, a Health Department rep said.
More than half of the neighborhood’s cooling towers had been dinged by health officials for issues during their latest inspections — including some that failed to perform regular monitoring and cleaning and did not submit Legionella test results to the Health Department as required by law, records reviewed by The Post show.
The city has issued a blanket warning to anyone who lives, works or has visited the infected area since late June to immediately contact a health care provider upon developing flu-like symptoms.
