Add The New York Post on Google The Guggenheim Museum is among the 31 Upper East Side buildings infected with Legionnaires’ disease, officials announced Friday.
The city Health Department, for the first time, released a preliminary list of buildings with cooling towers that tested positive for Legionella, the bacteria that causes the potentially deadly disease.
The Guggenheim, at 1071 Fifth Ave., and the owners of 18 other properties have already cleaned and disinfected their tainted water-cooling towers, the agency said.
The Guggenheim Museum is among the buildings with water cooling towers infected with Legionella. Getty Images The other 12 buildings were ordered to complete the deep cleaning by Saturday. It is not yet clear if they all complied with the timeframe.
The cluster of buildings was screened through a polymerase chain reaction test — which cannot indicate whether the bacteria are alive or dead.
Only live bacteria can cause the potentially devastating illness.
It’s also still not clear which building could have been the source of the outbreak.
The investigation will continue through the weekend — meaning more buildings could be added to the infected list.
The screening tests could not determine whether the Legionella was alive or dead. Universal Images Group via Getty Images It takes two weeks for the test results to be returned.
At least 46 people have been diagnosed with Legionnaires, including 22 who remain hospitalized.
The city so far has tested 183 cooling towers on the Upper East Side since the July 2 outbreak, officials said.
More than half of the neighborhood’s cooling towers had been dinged by health officials during their latest inspections — including some who failed to perform regular monitoring and cleaning and failing to submit Legionella test results to the health department, as required by law, records show.
Health officials emphasized that it is safe to use air conditioners and cooling centers in the neighborhood despite the outbreak.
