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A measles-infected Hasidic man traveled from Brooklyn to Michigan, unknowingly becoming Patient Zero in the Midwest by spreading the disease to 39 people before, a report said Tuesday.
Shortly after setting out on a cross-country fundraising charity fundraising trip last month, the man felt ill and stopped, Michigan health authorities told The Washington Post.
The first doctor misdiagnosed the traveler's cough and fever as bronchitis, while the second shrugged off an allergic reaction, the report said.
But as the latter doctor thought, he worried that the man – which officials did not publicly name – might have measles and gave the man 's cell to the local health department, the report said.
Health officials frantically tried to reach the walking biohazard, but could not get through because of an issue with his cellphone, kicking off a frenzied street-by-street search through the Detroit area's Hasidic enclave.
With the help of rabbinical leaders and a longtime member of the local Hatzolah chapter – who thought to look for the man's blue market sedan among the community's multitude of minivans – they found the man, who was stunned by the diagnosis.
"There is only one disease, and you have it," the Hatzolah member, Steve McGraw, told the Hebrew translator, according to The Washington Post. "He can not help but be very emotional. I could tell from the look on his face that he was devastated.
"He was doing the math in his head."
Over the course of a week, the man has been bounced from synagogues to kosher restaurants to the homes of the community members who have been to him for a night, contacting hundreds of people.
"This guy was walking around the world and contagious," McGraw told The Washington Post. "We knew we had a really significant exposure."
All told, 39 cases were confirmed in Michigan, the report said.
The original carrier had traveled in November 2018 from Israel to Brooklyn, the familiar route by which officials believed the US soil.
Efforts to curtail the contagion, particularly among Brooklyn's insular Hasidic enclaves, have been met with fierce resistance by parents of the health effects of the measles vaccine.
Mayor Bill of Blasio last week Posted in Hasidic Brooklyn ZIP codes 48 hours to get vaccinated or face a $ 1,000 fine.
Still stonewalled by some, the city Health Department on Monday shuttered Williamsburg yeshiva 's preschool program because they refused to turn over inoculation records.
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