Infectious disease spread by rat urine seeps into NYC after record high 2023: officials

Aw, rats!

New York City officials issued a dire warning about the alarming rise of a disease spread by rat urine — after a record-high number of cases in 2023.

Leptospirosis — spread by bacteria in the urine of infected Norway rats — can cause fever, chills, headache, muscle aches, vomiting, diarrhea, kidney or liver failure and meningitis, officials said.

Norway rats, also called brown rats, who dominate the rodent population in the boroughs.

Twenty-four cases of the disease were reported in the city last year — a troubling Big Apple record — while six had already been tallied so far in 2024, even though winter weather usually stops the spread of the disease, according to Quinn.

The bacteria can “persist in warm, moist environments for weeks,” according to New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene Deputy Commissioner Celia Quinn, who sounded the alarm in a memo last Friday.

“Transmission occurs through direct contact with infectious urine or urine contaminated water, soil,
or food, entering the body through open wounds or mucous membranes,” which usually happens when New Yorkers handle trash bins, the memo warned.

More than a third of the 98 city cases reported between 2001 to 2023 were in the Bronx, and the vast majority of victims were men, according to the report.

The wide spectrum of illnesses associated with the disease usually appear within five to 14 days of infection and recovery may take “several months,” according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Leptospirosis thrives during “excessive rain and unseasonably warm temperatures,” Quinn said, as she noted factors “associated with climate change” had spiked along with cases last June and October.

Some three million rats live the Big Apple, a study by a pest company found last year. That’s about a third of the city’s human population.

The news was a sobering squeak-quel to a city program proposed Thursday that would introduce rat birth control in the city to quell the booming population.