Cuomo Calls on State Department of Health to Probe City’s Role in Deadly Harlem Legionnaires’ Outbreak
City as Both Regulator & Landlord of Affected Buildings Creates Inherent Conflict
"Confidence in government is paramount, and New Yorkers deserve to know if the City followed its own rules to prevent this deadly outbreak" - Andrew Cuomo
Governor Andrew M. Cuomo, candidate for Mayor of New York City, today called on the State Department of Health to launch an independent investigation into the City’s actions prior to and in response to the Legionnaires’ Disease outbreak in Harlem, which to date has claimed five lives and infected more than 100 residents.
Under both state and city standards, building owners are required to test for Legionella (the bacteria that causes Legionnaires’) every 90 days. According to recent reporting, the Harlem outbreak has been traced to water cooling towers atop roughly a dozen neighborhood buildings, four of which are owned by the City itself. This dual role, Cuomo warned, raises troubling questions about whether City agencies complied with their own inspection and enforcement standards.
“Confidence in government is paramount, and New Yorkers deserve to know if the City followed its own rules to prevent this deadly outbreak,” Governor Cuomo said. “The last time we confronted a Legionnaires’ outbreak of this scale, we not only moved heaven and earth to stop it, we put in place tough new protocols to prevent it from happening again. With the City now serving as both the regulator and the landlord for many of the affected buildings, there is an inherent conflict of interest. Only an independent review can determine whether the right steps were taken – or whether City inaction made a bad situation worse.”
This is the most severe Legionnaires’ outbreak New York City has faced since 2015. The current inspection and testing standards were adopted in direct response to that outbreak, when Governor Cuomo—unsatisfied with the pace of the City’s response—mobilized state resources to identify the source of the Bronx cluster. That outbreak resulted in 16 deaths and more than 120 hospitalizations.
In its aftermath, Governor Cuomo, with city officials, spearheaded the nation’s first comprehensive statewide cooling tower regulations, requiring registration, routine testing, and mandatory disinfection protocols to curb future outbreaks. These standards were also codified into city law.
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