Speaker Menin questions July 31 'mission accomplished' press release

Okay, one more question I'm going to ask before passing it to Sarah Shulman.

So on July 31st, the department issued a press release.

New York City Health Department declares Upper East Side Legionnaires disease cluster exposure has ended.

However, after that time, four more deaths were reported.

I guess, why did the department feel it was necessary to put that press release out?

I mean, obviously we agree and we don't contest that the exposure ended on that date, but to take sort of that mission accomplished when people were still, many people were still in the hospital and then four deaths were reported subsequent to that.

Yeah, thank you for the question.

Let me sort of divide this into two separate segments.

So the first is the exposure had ended, and we typically use a clock of two weeks after the last person who developed symptoms was found to have developed those symptoms.

So that was two weeks into the period that we were at, which was July 31st.

From the perspective of

of the risk to New Yorkers, we wanted to make sure that we updated New Yorkers to know that the risk had been eliminated.

Now, the second question that you're asking is around the continuing case count.

So I'm going to turn it over to Dr.

Howard to talk a little bit more about how that process works.

Yeah, sure.

Thank you.

And I just first want to acknowledge that every death is a tragedy, and I offer my condolences to the family members of those who passed.

So even though we knew the source was eliminated, that doesn't mean our work doesn't continue.

And Legionnaire's disease is one of the diseases that is reportable to the New York City Health Department.

And for every report that comes in, the epidemiologists have to do a case investigation.

First, they review medical records to confirm that it meets the case definition, and then do an interview of the patient or a family member to determine a potential source of exposure.

Now, even though the source was eliminated, that process was still continuing.

The reason why we identified additional deaths after the source had been eliminated, there's a few possible explanations.

In some instances, an individual may have been exposed in the area, but may have traveled out of jurisdiction.

And we might not have known about that death until some time later.

In other instances, it can be difficult to reach a family member at this difficult time.

So there are delays in getting the information that we need in order to confirm that an individual was exposed to the area.

And third, some people who are diagnosed weeks ago succumb to that illness after a prolonged hospitalization.

So that's why we can have additional deaths, even though the source of exposure has been eliminated.