Health officials on Long Island are investigating 10 reported cases of Legionnaires’ disease — a rare form of pneumonia caused by a bacteria called Legionella.
The source of the cluster has yet to be identified, but New York is seeing an uptick in Legionnaires cases statewide, the Nassau County Department of Health said. The 10 cases of the disease, first identified in October, have been reported within a one-mile radius in a Long Island neighborhood, the county’s health department said.
According to CBS New York, medical teams are working on contact tracing, as well as swabbing and sampling on-site to find the cases’ origins. The cluster of cases includes people between the ages of 35 and 96. As of Saturday, one person has died from Legionnaires, two are hospitalized and seven have been released from the hospital, CBS New York reported.
People can contract Legionnaires by breathing in a mist or vapor containing the Legionella bacteria, which occur naturally in the environment, according to the county health department. Legionella is commonly found in fountains, spray parks, hot tubs, showers, and faucets.
The disease is not spread from person to person, the health department said. In 2018, there were nearly 10,000 cases of Legionnaires reported in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But the number of cases could have been 2.7 times higher than what was reported because it is often misdiagnosed as one of the more common forms of pneumonia, the CDC said. READ MORE
