NYC NOW - New York City Vowed Reform After Harlem’s Legionnaires’ Deaths. A New Outbreak Is Exposing the Gaps

Episode Date: July 22, 2026

After a deadly Legionnaires’ disease outbreak on the Upper East Side, WNYC health reporter Caroline Lewis and investigative data reporter Joe Hong explain how the illness spreads, what went wrong during the 2025 Harlem outbreak and why major gaps in cooling tower testing and inspections remain. Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images -Got any questions, comments or story ideas? Send us a message at [e-mail] Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

From WNYC, this is NYC now. I'm Jenae Pierre. Another New York City summer and another Legionnaire's disease outbreak. On today's episode, we discuss what's causing the spread of Legionnaires on Manhattan's Upper East Side and what the city learned

from last year's outbreak in Harlem. We'll get to that soon, but first, here's what we're keeping an eye on. A group of landlords is suing New York City's rent guidelines Board, claiming Mayor Zora Mundani meddled in a decision to freeze rents for tenants in stabilized units. The board voted in favor of the rent freeze last month.

The lawsuit accuses the nine-member panel of delivering the city's first ever two-year halt on rent increases to satisfy a campaign pledge made by Mumdani. It seeks to stop the freeze and force the rent guidelines board to instead implement a rent increase. The petition is the first legal challenge to the rent freeze. For more on the lawsuit and our coverage of this historic rent freeze, visit our news site, Gothamist. Speaking of rent, last week, Mayor Mumdani announced a rental reform agenda based on concerns raised at his rental rip-off hearings from earlier this year. These New Yorkers did not share these stories, only for them to be promptly forgotten.

They shared them, so they would serve as the foundation of the policies City Hall would pursue, the change we would deliver. The plan goes beyond the rent freeze approved last month and includes 23 recommendations in four categories. Cia Weaver directs the mayor's office to protect tenants. She spoke about the plan on WNYC's Brian Larishow. The first part of our report is about taking action on those most common occurring and difficult to enforce against concerns. That means addressing heat, mold, pest, and broken elevator complaints, which, according to the mayor, were some of the law. Archer's concerns voiced by New Yorkers. We are now going to actually investigate every single heat complaint that the city receives,

even if all of those complaints are in the same building. Also, if housing preservation and development or HPD inspectors come at a time when tenants aren't available, they'll be able to reschedule a visit at a time that works. The second category is holding landlords accountable. This initiative is really about using the range of enforcement tools that we have at our disposal. to really target the worst landlords in the city. That's Lila Borzart, Deputy Mayor for Housing and Planning. She says this looks like working in partnership with tenants

and, where necessary, using litigation tools to bring owners to court. The third category is empowering tenants across New York City. The mayor says that looks like legally recognizing tenant unions and in certain cases partnering with tenants across the city to support the transfer of their buildings to more responsible owners. And yes, the city does have the power to do that. Here's Cia Weaver again. It is often an option of last resort,

and after the owner has been given many, many opportunities to become current on their outstanding fines or fees or dress code violations in their building, and it's not a decision that we take lightly, but it is something that we will do where appropriate. The last category is policy making the housing market fairer and more transparent. The mayor says this, This includes requiring the disclosure of AI images on rental listings.

You shouldn't have to worry whether or not the apartment you are viewing online is real. After all, it's called street easy, not street hard. The administration plans to hold five NITHA in your neighborhood events beginning this September. Now to New Jersey, where a technical error led nearly 400 non-citizens to vote in recent elections, and thousands more were improperly registered to vote. It all happened because of an error in software that the State Motor Vehicle Commission used. The glitch happened between June 2023 and June 2024, but Governor Mikey Cheryl says she only found out about it last week. Now her administration is scrambling to contain the fallout.

At a press conference Tuesday, she had some pretty sharp words for former Governor Phil Murphy's administration. This entire situation is unacceptable. It's unacceptable that the ventures. released software with such a glaring error. It's unacceptable that the MVC took a year to get this issue fixed. And it's unacceptable that no one in the previous administration brought this to light, demanded accountability, or took action when it happened years ago. You're probably asking how something like this even happens, right?

According to Cheryl's administration, 6,600 non-citizens were errantly registered to vote after they went to the MVC to apply for either a driver's license or a state ID. We've all done it once or twice, at least in our lives. That's WNYC's New Jersey reporter, Michael Soul Warren. He says the process involves answering a series of questions on a pinpad. And apparently all these folks had indicated no on the pinpad when they were asked if they were American citizens. But the software that runs those pinfads registered them to vote anyways. Michael says of the 400 non-citizens who actually voted were people registered as

Democrats or Republicans or unaffiliated voters, and they were scattered around the state. Right now, there's no evidence that any elections were swayed by these voters. Though none of the elections were tampered with, Michael says Republicans in Trenton are renewing the call to institute new voter ID requirements. Some are calling to repeal the 2018 law that requires the NVC provide automatic voter registration. There were also calls for the voter roles to be audited, for legislative hearings on election security in the state, and even for the federal DOJ to launch its own investigation. This is all happening as President Trump remains laser-focused on election policy. He's long-made allegations of widespread voter fraud and

pushed conspiracy theories about electoral integrity. In a statement this week, the White House responded to the incident in New Jersey, calling it an example of why Congress should pass the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, better known as the Save Act. Michael says the administration believes that the legislation is necessary to restore trust. in elections. That bill, if passed, would create a national requirement for proof of citizenship just to register to vote, and then another requirement to show photo ID when actually going to vote. And critics of this say, well, disenfranchise voters who don't have passports or birth certificates.

That's WNYC's New Jersey reporter, Michael Soul Warren. A fifth person is dead in the Legionnaire's disease outbreak on Manhattan's Upper East Side. After the break, we look into what's causing the outbreak and why this is happening, two summers, in a row. Stay close. Welcome back. New York City health officials are investigating a Legionnaire's disease outbreak on the Upper East Side that turned deadly over the weekend. As of Wednesday afternoon, five deaths have been reported so far. The outbreak has sickened more than 80 people, including more than 50 who were hospitalized. Last year, an outbreak in Central Harlem killed seven people and hospitalized 90.

City lawmakers responded by requiring more frequent cooling tower testing. The health department also says it has increased the number of inspectors. But a WNYC and Gothamist analysis finds major gaps in cooling tower testing and inspections remain. So we wanted to know more. Our health reporter Caroline Lewis and data reporter Joe Hong are here to explain how Legionaire's disease spreads. What went wrong during that deadly 2025 outbreak? What the city changed afterward? and what's being done about the outbreak on the Upper East Side.

That's a lot to get into you, too. Welcome to the show. Hi, Jeney. Hello, thanks for having us. You know, I feel like we've had this conversation just a year ago, maybe this same time last year, in fact. Caroline, can you remind us what Legionaire's disease is and how people actually get it?

Yeah, unfortunately, this is feeling like a regular occurrence at this point. Legionaire's disease is a type of pneumonia, and it's not spread between people, instead you get it from Legionella bacteria and sort of inhaling it in water vapor specifically. And Legionella is actually really prevalent in our environment. It's in cooling towers. It's in plumbing systems. And not everyone who inhales it will get sick.

But for those who do get sick, it can come with symptoms like fatigue, fever, chills, cough, muscle aches, difficulty breathing. And these symptoms can show up anywhere from two days after you get exposed to two weeks. And this can be treated with antibiotics. if it's caught quickly, but it also can be quite severe or even deadly, as you mentioned. Yeah. Let's talk about how serious legionnaires can become and who's most at risk. So, yeah, so it can cause serious illness. You know, city health officials say older adults, people who are immunocompromised, people who smoke or have chronic conditions like asthma. Those are the people who really face the greatest risk of getting sick. And so I think you can see even from city data,

just how long some people end up staying in the hospital. You know, we see. saw the hospitalization numbers go up and up. And then they were sort of not going up as much and people were starting to get discharged. But you saw that there were just those, you know, certain people who were clearly staying there for, you know, weeks at a time. And then we did start seeing some of those deaths showing up. And other outbreaks also have turned deadly in the past, you know, in the Bronx. There was a big outbreak in 2015 that really put Legionnaires on the map in the city that killed 16 people. And then the Harlem outbreak last year killed seven. So yeah, so this has become a major issue in recent years. Yeah, and I want to bring our colleague Joe Hong into the

conversation. Joe, you dug into Legionella bacteria extensively last year. I'm just curious, how does contaminated mist get into the air? Yes. So in New York City, there are a couple different ways you can contract Legionair's disease. Sometimes it will show up in a building's plumbing system and people can inhale it when they're taking showers, the mist comes out of the showerhead. And in those cases, people are advised to take certain precautions with their plumbing. But those cases are typically contained within buildings, right? Okay. But when you have a big cluster of cases, like the one we're seeing right now on the Upper East

side, people are living in different buildings and the source is usually a water cooling tower. cooling towers are often located on rooftops. They're these sort of big metal boxes. If you've ever looked at satellite view on Google Maps, you'll see them just sort of all over New York City on the rooftops of skyscrapers and things like that, right? Now, these cooling towers, they help regulate the temperature within a building. They operate as part of air conditioning systems. So they circulate water through buildings and that water absorber. heat. Now that warmed up water gets pumped back into the rooftop cooling tower and then fans in the

cooling tower release the warmed up water vapor into the air. Now without proper treatment and monitoring, the warm sort of stagnant water that sits in the cooling towers can really foster the growth of legionella bacteria and then the mist is contaminated and it gets shot out into the air where it can be inhaled by folks walking by. Right. And that contaminated mist can travel several city blocks. And I think that's something people get tripped up on. They say, oh, this building over here, it's cooling tower tested positive for Legionella.

I'm just going to stay away from that building. Yeah, but you're still in the area. Exactly. So people aren't actually at higher risk because they live in a building that tested positive for Legionella. instead that cooling tower is putting people in a large area at risk. Gotcha. But why do cooling towers keep becoming the problem here? Well, the health department is responsible for inspections and enforcement.

You know, they're supposed to sort of regularly inspect cooling towers to make sure they don't have, you know, Legionella growing. But it's really up to building owners to stay vigilant because Legionella can grow really quickly, right? So I think people, that's the question people have. Like, why does this keep a couple? a problem. And it is actually like requires really diligent maintenance plans and testing to like make sure that building towers are not fostering Legionella. And so each building owner really needs to have like a plan in place, you know, especially in the summer because it's, you know, warm weather that Legionella loves basically. And so with the temperatures getting hotter, especially

like climate change can make this a more frequent problem. That's something that experts are really worried about, that this is just becoming more prevalent. And, you know, we saw the outbreak on the Upper East Side happened during a historic heat wave. I don't know if that contributed to it, but certainly, like, warming temperatures or something people are worried about. And so there's no foolproof way to just prevent this bacteria from growing at all. But experts say this disease is largely preventable with the right maintenance. And so the city has this team of water ecologists in the health department who are responsible for checking up on buildings. And it's not just that they're looking in the cooling tower, they're making sure that they have a reasonable

maintenance plan in place, that they're actually following that plan, they're doing regular testing. And, you know, part of the problem and part of what we found last year is that there was this shortage of inspectors and the number of inspections was really going down. So there wasn't that same level of oversight that we were expecting and that the city had tried to put in place. And so they have been trying to staff up, you know, with these water ecologists since last year, but we found that, you know, there are still vacancies. They, you know, they have been sort of trying to hire people, but training takes several months, it turns out, where they have to sort of shadow people who are used to doing these inspections before they can work on their own. And, you know, the union that represents water ecologists said part of the problem is you have to have an advanced degree to do this work and some experience and you're working, you know, on rooftops doing hazardous things and you're getting paid $50,000 to $60,000 a year. So it's a, it's been a challenge, I think. for the city health department to really staff up in the way that they're trying to. Yeah, staff shortages will always do it.

And your latest piece on our news site, got the miss.com, was very eye-opening in that way. I was very shocked to learn those numbers. And we keep looking back at this outbreak that happened in Harlem just last year, where more than 100 people got sick. What did we ultimately find out about the source of that outbreak, Caroline? Yeah. So in the case of the Harlem outbreak, officials did testing on cooling towers as they're sort of in the process of doing in the Upper East Side now. And they had to do testing to figure out ultimately which cooling tower, you know, multiple cooling towers test positive for Legionella. And they had to figure out which of those sites was ultimately responsible for actually getting people sick. And they found that one of the two sites that was responsible was Harlem Hospital, which, you know, is city run and was incidentally where many of the victims of that outbreak were being. treated. And we ultimately reported and, you know, Joe found that Harlem Hospital was not following its own cooling tower maintenance plan. And then the second tower was located at a construction site for another city-owned building, which was managed by the construction company Skanska.

And that tower had not even been registered. Wow. Joe, what did the data show about the city's inspection system leading up to the outbreak last year? Yeah. In the months leading up to the 2025 outbreak, the city inspected 59% fewer towers than it had when Eric Adams first took office in 2022. There's a chart that we've published several times now on our Gothamas website that shows that the city did a really good job of inspecting nearly every cooling tower before the pandemic. But then you see inspection rates sort of plummet during the pandemic and then spike back up in 2022. But since then, it has just declined steadily.

The health department attributed this decline to short staffing and budget cuts, but the health department also aims to inspect every cooling tower annually, but it hasn't really been doing that. Okay, so they were short-staffed on last year. What did the city change after that Harlem outbreak? So the city did put in place a lot of the existing requirements around cooling towers after the outbreak in the Bronx 10 years ago. Now, this was a historic outbreak. and some of the requirements included testing and maintenance. And whenever we're reporting on Legionaire's disease, we reach out to the city health department for comment,

and the first thing they'll say is that New York City has some of the strongest regulations in the country, if not the world. And that's true. But what we've seen is that the implementation and enforcement of those regulations is still lagging. So after last year's outbreak in Harlem, The city created even stricter rules around testing that went into effect this past May. Cooling towers turned on during the warmer months now have to be tested every 31 days instead of every three months. And building owners can be fined between $2,000 and $4,000 for failing to report results to the city. As a result of the Harlem outbreak and the drop in inspections that we found,

the city also committed to hiring more water ecologists so they could inspect cooling towers more free. frequently. But it's still unclear whether all of those staff were onboarded and trained and ready to go when we saw this big surge in cases on the Upper East Side. Yeah. I know you mentioned that the cooling towers will now be tested every 31 days instead of every three months. What is more frequent testing supposed to accomplish? So the goal is to better monitor what's happening inside these cooling tower systems more frequently during the high-risk season when the weather is warmer. But here it gets really interesting because testing alone isn't a solution.

I've heard from scientists and other industry experts that a common practice is to conduct the testing right after you clean and disinfect your cooling tower. But then you're just testing the cooling tower at peak cleanliness, and you're not really getting any insight into whether or not your routine maintenance plan is working. It's sort of like when boxers shed a bunch of weight right before a way in. Yeah. Yeah. And what you should be doing instead is testing right before you clean and disinfect. Because remember, the city's maintenance requirements were designed to prevent the growth of Legionella in cooling towers. And if the building owners are doing everything they're supposed to, you shouldn't have Legionella growing to dangerous levels at all.

But if you're only testing right after you clean so you can get the negative test result, it almost defeats the purpose. So they're doing this all wrong. Yeah. And it's a big concern that a lot of experts have. Wow. So we know the city tightened its rules after that outbreak last year. Did it also start inspecting more towers, too? So inspections increased only slightly.

More than half of the city's cooling towers had gone more than a year without inspection in the months leading up to this outbreak. More than one in five buildings had no required test results on record for 2026. The health department says it's doubled its inspectors, but they also said these new inspectors spent several months in training and conducted no inspections in May or June. I mean, it was frankly a little surprised to see after what happened last year that they weren't more prepared this year and that we haven't seen sort of the proportional uptick in inspection numbers. Yeah. And Caroline, you mentioned that it takes months for training and onboarding. Why is that? I think the specialized nature of this work is part of why there's such a long training period. But I think the real concern also among union reps who represent these workers is that the city didn't have the sense of urgency that it needed when actually hiring people, you know, perhaps keeping in mind that there's a training period, you know, that they should fast track some of these hires.

And they were saying, you know, the same sort of red tape that holds up city hires in general was holding this up. And so, yeah, they got approved for, you know, 23 more water. in November, and then we're still in the process of, you know, hiring and onboarding people in July. And so it's like knowing that these outbreaks happen in the summer. So I think that was, yeah, part of why people are frustrated. So what do health officials know about the outbreak that's happening right now on the Upper East Side? Yeah. So just to take people back to a couple weeks ago, this sort of first was identified on July 2nd. And cases started to pop up over that like holiday weekend. And we've seen cases now, dozens of cases in these three zip codes that stretch sort of from the East River to Fifth Avenue, 10028, 10075, and 10128.

And so more than 70 people have been infected. At this point, about 60 have been hospitalized. And some of those people have started to be discharged. But we've also seen some deaths so far. And the city has been sort of working to investigate and contain this outbreak this whole time. So right away, when the outbreak was identified, they started sending these water ecologists out to, you know, pull water samples from cooling towers so they could be tested for Legionella bacteria. And so far, we've seen that 76 towers tested positive. Now, that doesn't mean that all of those were the ones getting people sick. These were rapid tests that sort of tested for bacteria that could be alive or dead. And you really need to find the live bacteria, which is what's getting people sick. But I think it did show just how prevalent Legionella is. We found it in the cooling towers on the Met. We found it at the Guggenheim. We founded it a couple of private schools on the Upper East Side. And so it is really prevalent.

And so at this point, the city has ordered the building owners, you know, of all those buildings to drain, clean, disinfect those towers. And we have started to see the number of new cases go down. And so city officials are saying they think that that has really been sufficient to help contain the outbreak. like, you know, just the idea that we immediately started remediating all these towers. But we still don't know which tower actually is getting people sick. And so now they have to do live cultures to find, you know, which towers had live bacteria. And then they have to do whole genome sequencing to match that bacteria to the bacteria in people who tested positive for Legionnaire's disease. And hopefully we'll ultimately know, okay, it was this tower and this tower that they were actually getting people sick.

And, you know, I think as we saw with last year's outbreak, I think those building owners will likely face a lot of lawsuits. Definitely. Yeah, yeah. And we'll probably keep an eye on that for sure. Joe, should residents assume that a tower without a recent inspection or tests is a dangerous tower? So there's a Legionella expert that I speak to pretty frequently. Her name's Janet Stout. And she said people living or working.

or working near towers without reported results or recent inspections are not at greater risk, and that's something she wanted me to drive home. Because again, the mist from cooling towers can travel a significant distance. That said, she also wants residents to sort of keep their building owners accountable, making sure they're following all the regulations. Because, yeah, on one hand, it is the city's responsibility to make sure that these cooling towers are, regularly inspected. But on the other hand, building owners share half of that responsibility because they're the ones who own the cooling towers and they're the ones who should be making

sure that they stay monitored and disinfected regularly. So Caroline, we talked about the symptoms, fatigue, fever, chills, cough, muscle aches, difficulty breathing. What should people do if they think they may be sick? Yeah, so city health officials have really been. trying to drive this home, that if you have been on the Upper East Side since late June and you start to develop flu-like symptoms, like the ones we talked about, fever, muscle, aches, chills, that kind of thing. You should contact your doctor right away, you know, or find a health care provider and get tested for legionnaires. And I think at this point, the city is hoping that we're not going to see too many new people getting infected, but as I mentioned, symptoms can show up

two weeks later so that these cases might trickle in. Yeah. Caroline, before I let you go, can we quickly talk about the parasite outbreak that's running folks to the bathroom? Who's responsible for this hot diarrhea summer? Well, I regret pointing that phrase, first of all. I kind of hate it, but basically we're seeing, and I think that's the visceral reaction. I can only say hot diarrhea summer because I can't really pronounce what it is. Oh, yes. Cyclosporiasis is what we're talking about for people who are unfamiliar. Basically, we're seeing more. More cases this year in New York and other states than we have recently. And it's a form of food poisoning that comes from a parasite that can get transferred from feces to fresh fruits and vegetables. And these outbreaks are currently being investigated, including the one in New York, which has sickened more than 500 people statewide since early May.

Are you good? I'm okay. More than 400 of those people are in the city, actually. And so city health officials are recommending that people. just take extra care washing their fresh produce and that, you know, they say if you really want to be safe, you can, you know, consider cooking your vegetables. And in some other states, you know, we have started to see a resolution where the federal government linked cyclosporiasis outbreaks to shredded lettuce from Mexico that was being served at Taco Bell. But New York was not one of the states, you know, where that was sort of determined to be the source. And so this investigation is ongoing. And unfortunately, a spokesperson for the health department said, You know, we do get a certain number of these cases every year, and there isn't always just like one easy common source.

So we have to see whether we get that sort of clear resolution here. Man, I'm trying to be as careful as I can. And I'm sure a listener just heard you say, cook my vegetables, what? I know. It's too hot for that. Everyone wants their fresh salad this summer. You know, to put it in perspective, a few hundred cases versus eight million people, I guess people can determine what level of risk. Take your chances.

For explosive diarrhea they're comfortable with. Yeah. Man, this summer is going down, right? I know. I know. I'm on the plague beat is just how I feel at this point. Yeah. That's WNYC's health reporter Caroline Lewis.

And investigative data reporter, Joe Hong. Thanks so much, you too. Thanks, Jena. Thank you. And thank you for listening to NYC now. I'm Jene Pierre. Take care of yourself out there. See you next time.