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The owners of a Bronx hotel identified as a potential source of Legionnaires’ disease hit the roof Tuesday — slamming the “game of one-upsmanship” between city and state officials for sowing misinformation about the health scare.
Glenn Isaacs, VP of the Empire Hotel Group, said that while anonymous city officials told The New York Times the cooling tower at its Opera House Hotel in the South Bronx was infected and likely the root of the outbreak, he had heard nothing of the sort from the city.
“We are deeply concerned that there has been a rush to judgment as part of some game of one-upsmanship between city and state officials,” Isaacs said in a sharply worded press release.
“Why else would the city rush out with anonymous statements to the Times? Was the city trying to take credit for solving the ‘mystery’ of how this all started?”
At a senior center in The Bronx Tuesday, a testy Mayor de Blasio refuted Isaacs’ claim that city officials hadn’t provided the hotel with information.
He also dismissed questions about the appearance that he and Gov. Cuomo were competing rather than cooperating in response to the outbreak, which has infected 115 people and killed 12 in the South Bronx.
“We are focused on this outbreak, not personalities, not politics,” de Blasio said.


