Legionnaire’s Disease Detected in East Village Housing Complex

Legionnaire’s disease has been detected in the water system of a housing complex in the East Village, following a Health Department probe looking into why two residents there had tested positive for the illness.

The probe at Haven Plaza—located at 200 Avenue C—was kick started as part of standard agency protocol, which mandates that inspections occur when two people test positive at a given location within a year.

One of these two residents had tested positive for Legionnaire’s in May, while the other was sickened last June. Haven Plaza is owned by an LLC affiliated with Catholic Homes NY and the New York Institute for Human Development; building management is supposed to regularly test for the disease, which thrives in warm water and is named after the Legionella bacteria.

“The risk of getting sick from a building’s water system is very low, especially for healthy people,” a spokesperson for the Health Department said in a statement. “As part of our evaluation, we worked with building management to promptly test the buildings’ water system, and the test results have confirmed the presence of Legionella bacteria.”

The spokesperson also shared a June 23 letter with Straus News that was sent to all Haven Plaza residents, which confirmed that water testing was conducted at five buildings on-site, resulting in the detection of the disease. Residents had first been made aware of the probe via a letter on May 15, with a follow-up in-person meeting on May 19.

The new letter stresses that the disease, a form of pneumonia, is not contagious and spreads via infected water vapor.

However, people with certain preexisting health conditions such as lung disease or a history of smoking can become severely ill, with a mortality rate that can be as high as 10 percent. Symptoms can include fever, chills, muscle aches, or a cough.

The Health Dept. has advised residents currently living in Haven Plaza, especially those living with these health conditions, to take extensive and varied precautions that mainly involve avoiding normal showers entirely.

Firstly, officials say that a warm bath is acceptable, as long as residents leave the room while the bathtub is filling up.

If residents lack a bathtub, yet possess a handheld shower (rather than a fixed one), they are advised to bathe using the “hose” of said shower. This involves unscrewing the showerhead—if possible—and bathing at a “low flow,” while washing the shower head afterwards.

Finally, any Haven Plaza resident with both a fixed shower and no bathtub has been advised to bathe with a bucket filled up by their sink, ideally after removing the faucet aerator.

The persistence of Legionnaire’s disease has bedeviled officials since a deadly outbreak struck ten separate buildings in Harlem last summer, sickening 114 people and killing seven between July 25 and August 29.

Seven of the ten buildings had reportedly not been tested for a year, all while the inspection workforce had shrunk rapidly. However, a significant turnaround in staffing numbers has since been reported, and the City Council has passed a bill strengthening testing requirements.

Legionella was detected in Harlem again this January, after two residents were sickened by the shared hot-water system at 3333 Broadway in the span of a year.

Around the same time, co-op residents living at the Cherokee Apartments—located between East 78th Street and East 79th Street—were also advised that a similar probe had discovered the bacteria in the plumbing system.