Mayor Zohran Mamdani hits back at NYC Council Speaker Menin's charge of mishandling Legionnaires' outbreak

Josephine Stratman, New York Daily News on Jul 22, 2026

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NEW YORK — Mayor Zohran Mamdani hit back against City Council Speaker Menin’s attacks over his administration’s handling of the Legionnaires’ outbreak — saying he was putting public health over politics.

Menin has criticized the mayor for not ordering more proactive cleaning of cooling towers on the Upper East Side, where the outbreak occurred and has been linked to five deaths and nearly 80 infections in Menin’s Council district.

But Mamdani said he was more concerned about making sure the job is done right.

“I’m frankly less interested in the politics of it all, more in the public health of it,” the mayor said in a response to a question about the Council speaker’s criticism.

Mamdani said on Wednesday that a blanket cleaning approach, like Menin had called for, could actually backfire by degrading the towers, creating an environment for the bacteria to latch onto and proliferate in the future.

“We know that Legionnaires’ is something that has affected our city over many, many years, and we are both trying to stop this cluster in the moment and ensure that we are not weakening our ability to stop it in the future,” Mamdani said.

“When I sat with public health experts, what I was told time and again is that if we were to do a blanket disinfectant of every single cooling tower across the Upper East Side, that would weaken those cooling towers’ ability to protect against Legionnaires’ in the years to come.

“We will not rest until each and every New Yorker is living the public health that they deserve,” Mamdani said, adding that that means fighting this cluster and ensuring better city processes for future years.

A day earlier, before city officials announced the fifth death connected to the outbreak, Menin knocked the administration for moving too slowly on the crisis.

“With every hour that towers were not disinfected, with every day that they were not prophylactically disinfected, more New Yorkers became sick, and four tragically died. That is simply unacceptable,” Menin said at a press conference before the announcement of the latest Legionnaires’ death.

Menin had also raised concerns about a tower cleaning compliance law passed by the City Council last year that took effect in May. She said that about 25% of the city’s cooling towers were not compliant with the new law.

But as for the immediate outbreak, health officials said the city had turned the corner.

“The good news is we’re in a very reassuring position,” Health Commissioner Alister Martin said. “We’re confident that we’ve eliminated that source. When we look at the data, the data demonstrates that the last new diagnosis of Legionnaires’ disease was on July 15th.”

The disease is a severe form of pneumonia caused by the Legionella bacteria. The cluster was first identified on the Upper East Side in early July, per city data. The bacteria can grow in buildings’ HVAC cooling towers.

Most people exposed to the bacteria do not become sick, but the disease is fatal in about 10% of cases and is most dangerous for those above age 50 or with underlying health conditions.

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