The city sends disease detectives to Williamsburg to trace the contacts of 285 people who’ve come down with measles since October.
By Lenny Bernstein , Lenny Bernstein Reporter covering health and medicine Email Bio Follow Lena H. Sun and Lena H. Sun National reporter focusing on health Email Bio Follow Gabrielle Paluch April 11 at 8:38 AM NEW YORK — Even among New York's Hasidic Jews, members of the ultra-Orthodox Satmar sect are known for their strict religious and cultural traditions. They speak mainly Yiddish. They shun the secular world.
Men identified with the Satmar Hasidic sect go about their business a day after New York City declared a public health emergency in their community because of spiraling measles cases. “It is highly unusual for the city to deploy health workers in this manner,” Miranda said. The last time health-care workers undertook the time-consuming work of contact tracing was during the Zika outbreak in 2016.
Israel Friedman, a property manager who said his many siblings and two of his three children have been immunized, agreed, saying: “We’re talking about a very small minority who aren’t vaccinated.”His infant is still too young to be vaccinated, he said. The child, a 13-month old, had breathing difficulties, said Rabia Agha, director of pediatric disease. Still, the girl’s parents refused to have her vaccinated after she recovered, despite the entreaties of the medical staff.
“When an outbreak is concentrated in a specific group, there is a risk of outsiders stigmatizing that group,” said Saad Omer, an infectious-disease expert at Emory University who researches public health and immunization. “This risk is exacerbated when a public health emergency is declared.” Measles is contagious from four days before the appearance of the telltale rash and until four days after, so exposure often occurs without people realizing, especially during flu season, when many children show similar symptoms.
Another questions how much money doctors make by administering what the author describes as unnecessary care.
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