[ad_1]
NEW YORK (JTA) – In January, before a measles outbreak spread in New York's Jewish Orthodox neighborhoods, Channie Klor booked a paschal stay at a Pennsylvania hotel for her family of seven.
Four months later, more than 500 cases of the disease spread throughout the United States during an outbreak related to orthodox Jews, particularly infected unvaccinated hassidim. And the disease is very contagious: a simple Orthodox traveler from Israel, who left for Michigan via New York, spread the disease to 39 people after a misdiagnosis.
This left Klor with a dilemma: stay home, vaccinate her baby at least 8 months earlier in the recommended range for vaccination or stay away from public places for the duration of her stay at the school. hotel.
Receive the daily edition of the Times of Israel by email and never miss our best stories
Free registration
It is a calculation made by tens of thousands of Jewish clerics who will fill hotels for Passover, dine and mingle nearby for eight days.
This year, program organizers in the metropolitan area of New York are trying to make sure their clients do not carry the disease. None of the people who spoke to the Jewish Telegraph Agency said that she was asking for a vaccine registry. But some said they asked their guests to be vaccinated before arriving at the hotel.
An illustrative photo of April 5, 2019 shows two boys walking beside a school bus in a Jewish neighborhood of Monsey, in Rockland County, New York. (Johannes Eisele / AFP)
"We warned everyone that if they did not shoot, they would not be able to come to our hotel," said Rabbi Motty Katz, Katz Pesach program manager at Long Island Hilton in Huntington, 39, State of New York. "We are going to be very strict about this. … If you do not shoot, do not go to a public place. "
Rabbi Yitzchok Neger, a Passover Program Manager at the Wyndham Golf Resort in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, said he was "rather convinced that we have no viruses or any contagious situation where we are, with our guests . "
Most of its 1,300 guests are not Hassidim.
"Our guests do not come from any of the Hasidic communities, so other communities are very supportive," he said, suggesting that vaccination is more common in non-Aidsic Orthodox communities. "A large part of our people come from places where the rabbis sent a letter to everyone asking them to get vaccinated. Some of the shuls here had free clinics. "
Every year, kosher caterers and tourism companies rent entire hotels for their holidays, providing meals, religious services, classes and entertainment. More than 100,000 Jews around the world, mostly Orthodox, will celebrate this holiday in a Passover hotel, according to Raphi Flowering, founder of TotallyJewishTravel.com, a website serving as a clearing house for Pesach vacation bookings.
The measles outbreak has been linked to low vaccination rates. Jane Zucker, assistant commissioner of the New York City Vaccination Office, said the vaccine coverage rate among the most Hassidic of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, was one of the lowest among young children.
A nurse prepares the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine at the Rockland County Health Department in Haverstraw, Rockland County, NY, on April 5, 2019. (Johannes Eisele / AFP)
Agudath Israel of America, which represents the Haredi Jews, insists that the vaccination rates of Orthodox neighborhoods are equivalent to those of "many other municipalities", but that their communities may be more vulnerable for other reasons: its members frequently travel abroad and are closely related social networks, as well as many children at the ages most exposed to the disease.
Asking customers not to come in and they are not immune is the best approach for hotels to get closer to their holidays, said L & # 39; via Weisinger, member of Emes, l & # 39; Hebrew for "truth", a new group of orthodox nurses encouraging vaccination. . If Weisinger had theoretically been able to set up a policy in a hotel, she would have asked each guest to be vaccinated and then checked her vaccination record at the door.
"As a citizen, you do not have the right to go to a hotel in Pesach," she said. "It's private, so if they say," Unless you're vaccinated, you're not welcome, "there's nothing wrong with that. Here is your money back. It does not matter.
"With people from all communities, all programs and all places, it's like [opening] a feather pillow [and] gather all these feathers back. "
In the end, Klor decided to give his baby an early MMR vaccine. In total, approximately 30 members of his extended family will spend Passover at Wyndham Golf Resort. If she had not been able to vaccinate her children, she said, Klor would have spent the holidays keeping them out of the public areas of the hotel.
"For a moment, I thought we might have to rent a house instead," said Klor, a nurse practitioner from South Bend, in Indiana. "He is premature, so I protect him a bit more. If I could not get this vaccine, I probably would have ended up going there, but I would be extremely worried all the time. "
Signs about measles and measles vaccine are posted at the Rockland County Health Department in Pomona, New York, March 27, 2019 (AP Photo / Seth Wenig)
Even outside the Passover hotel industry, vacations bring people to gather in airplanes, synagogues, and shops. A collection of clothes before Passover in Baltimore forced those present to sign a legal vaccination waiver. Klor said that at South Bend, people were hurrying to get vaccinated before the holidays.
"I am angry to have to voluntarily submit to more pain than necessary because I want to protect him from measles," wrote Klor on Facebook, referring to his baby. "When you choose to vaccinate, it's more than you, it's a disinterested decision that protects our most vulnerable population."
[ad_2]
Source link