Officials: 1 person dead, 2 hospitalized after Legionnaires’ outbreak in Nassau County

The Nassau County Department of Health is investigating a Legionnaires’ outbreak on the border of Levittown and Wantagh.

Ten people were hospitalized with Legionnaires’ disease in a 1-mile radius of Wantagh Avenue and Old Jerusalem Road.

One person has died, and two others remain hospitalized. Seven people have been released from the hospital. Residents tell News 12 they are concerned and hope the Department of Health releases more information. Wantagh resident Christine Schlendorf says she wants to know where it came from.

“I want to know where the contamination originates from or where it actually comes from,” says Schlendorf. “That’s what I would be concerned about.” Health officials say they are investigating the source, but that it is not from the water company supply in the area and has no connection to nearby schools.

The Department of Health says it was at some point in October when the cluster occurred. The people infected in the cluster are between 35 and 96 years old.

Legionnaires’ is a serious type of pneumonia. It can be contracted when breathing in mist or vapor containing the bacteria, most commonly found in faucets, showers and fountains.

Nassau Health Commissioner Dr. Lawrence Eisenstein says environmental health teams are going to swab air conditioning systems in large buildings, check decorative fountains in front of stores, spray parks and swimming pools.

“The fatality rate of Legionnaires’ disease has ranged from 5–30% during various outbreaks and approaches 50% for nosocomial infections, especially when treatment with antibiotics is delayed.[36]

“Hospital-acquired Legionella pneumonia has a fatality rate of 28% and the principal source of infection in such cases is the drinking-water distribution system.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legionnaires%27_disease#Prognosis

Thanks for posting…. The article is very well done on simply and without catchy hyperbole describing key aspects of Legionella sources for exposure and the health effects.

Something like 15 years ago, a large manufacturer had a Legionella outbreak involving both assembly line workers and the front office administration staff. I first designed the technical means to disinfect the facility water system (about 6000 GPM), obtained corporate approval then implemented onsite 2-days after approval. This was costing the company about $1MM per day in revenue. About a dozen persons contracted Legionella but thankfully no fatalities.

All told, the facility was shutdown about 10-days. About 3-days of that was simply due to a single jerk union steward that wanted his pipe fitters to turn water valves on and off for us. My field team had to stand down until the steward cycled off duty.

After the facility was up and running, I put together a different team of engineers and we traced every single waterline in the entire facility. We found the piping drawings to be out of date/inaccurate. It turned out that non-engineering approved modifications to the water distribution system over the years had left a number of deadlegs in the potable water system and 2 of these had led to Legionella contamination and human exposure.

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