A sixth person has died in connection with a monthlong cluster of Legionnaires' disease on Manhattan's Upper East Side, New York City health officials said Tuesday, as the outbreak's total case count held at 90 amid signs the underlying source of contamination has been brought under control.

At least 90 cases have been identified in the outbreak since it began in early July, according to the New York City Health Department, though no new cases have been diagnosed since July 17. Six people remain hospitalized, while 65 patients have been discharged since the cluster first emerged in the Carnegie Hill and Yorkville neighborhoods on the Upper East Side.

Health officials said dozens of cooling towers that tested positive for the presence of live Legionella bacteria, the pathogen responsible for the disease, have since been cleaned and disinfected. "We are confident the source of the Legionella bacteria has been eliminated," the health department said in a statement Tuesday.

The outbreak was first identified on July 2, when the department confirmed two Legionnaires' cases in close proximity in the affected ZIP codes, 10028, 10128 and 10075. Investigators went on to test 183 cooling towers across 160 buildings in the surrounding area, ultimately finding 77 that tested positive for the bacteria, a scale of contamination officials said was more than three times larger than that found during a similar outbreak in........

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