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BROOKLYN WEEKLY, APRIL 14, 2019
Spread of measles virus
leads to public health
emergency in Brooklyn
Four Williamsburg zip codes must get vaccinated
BY COLIN MIXSON
Mayor de Blasio declared
a public health
emergency at Brooklyn
Public Library’s
Williamsburg Branch
on April 2 in response
to the growing spread
of the measles virus
in Brooklyn’s Orthodox
Jewish communities,
where nearly 300
people have fallen ill
with the potentially
fatal disease since
October.
“We cannot allow
this dangerous disease
to make a comeback
in New York
City,” said de Blasio.
“We have to stop
it now.”
The mayor’s emergency
OUT SICK: Health inspectors traced 40 measles
cases back to Williamsburg’s Yeshiva Kehilath
Yakov, which allowed unvaccinated kids
to attend class. Photo by Colin Mixson
declaration mandates that residents
of four Williamsburg zip codes — 11205,
11206, 11211, and 11249 — must seek vaccination,
or face Department of Health violations
and fi nes totaling as much as $1,000 per
unvaccinated person.
The emergency declaration follows
a previously announced Department of
Health exclusion order barring unvaccinated
children from attending schools
and day cares within both Williamsburg
and Borough Park, and demonstrates a
shift in the city’s focus to combating the
disease in the northern Brooklyn neighborhood,
where the majority of new
measles cases have been discovered,
according to de Blasio.
“It is now much more a Williamsburg
problem than a Borough Park problem,”
said the mayor.
De Blasio also touted the city’s authority
to temporarily close schools found in violation
of the Health Department’s exclusion
order as an option of last resort in combating
the spread of measles.
“That is not a tool we want to use, but it
is one we will use if we have no choice,” de
Blasio said.
And throughout the press conference,
city offi cials reiterated the safety and effectiveness
of the measles vaccine, with the
city’s chief physician describing an annual
national death toll that reached into the
hundreds before the measles vaccine was
invented.
“Getting vaccinated is far safer than
getting the measles,” said Department
of Health Commissioner Dr. Oxiris Barbot.
“The vaccine has been proven safe
and effective in preventing
the spread
of measles.”
This is the fi rst
time the city has issued
a public health
emergency mandating
vaccines, according
to Deputy Mayor
of Health and Human
Services Dr. Herminia
Palacio, who
attributed the need
for the extraordinary
measure to the
combination of both
a large scale anti-vaccination
movement
and the outbreak of
the potentially fatal
illness.
“The combination
of a large
anti-vax movement...
with a large outbreak has
not happened in the way that it’s
happening right now,” said Palacio.
Offi cials traced the borough’s measles
outbreak to a Brooklyn resident traveling
from Israel — where a similar spread of
the disease infected more than 1,000 people
last year — in October, and the infection
has since affl icted 285 people within
the borough’s Orthodox Jewish Community,
the vast majority of whom are
under 18 years old, according to Health
Department statistics.
So far, 21 people have been hospitalized
with the measles, including fi ve people who
required intensive care, according to Barbot,
who noted there have been no fatalities.
Since the Health Department issued its
mandatory exclusion order in December,
numerous schools violating the city’s emergency
mandate played host to mini outbreaks
of the extremely virulent disease,
including one Williamsburg yeshiva that
inspectors have connected to more than 40
cases since January.
This is the largest outbreak of the measles
that New York City has experienced
since 1991, according to Barbot, and its
spread represents a major spike over the
two infections that plagued New Yorkers in
2017.
The highly contagious airborne pathogen
produces symptoms including fever,
cough, and a runny nose, and can cause diarrhea,
ear infection, pneumonia, encephalitis,
and death — with about one of every
1,367 kids infected dying due to fatal complications
from measles.
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