Legionnaires’ outbreak rocks New York as experts warn of rising climate threat

This 1978 electron microscope image made available by the CDC shows the Legionella pneumophila bacterium, responsible for causing legionnaires' disease. Photograph: Francis Chandler/CDC/AP

A New York outbreak of legionnaires’ disease, a rare but severe form of pneumonia, highlights the microbe’s growing and disproportionate impacts in a warming climate.

At least 28 people have been sickened in an outbreak on the Upper East Side, a wealthy neighborhood between Central Park and the East River in Manhattan. Health department officials, seeking to stop the outbreak, have sampled water from nearly 160 building cooling towers to test for the bacteria.