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The New York City Department of Health closed two more Williamsburg yeshivos for failing to comply with the measles ordinances, but the Yeshivos said the department was now conducting a witch hunt and its rules were impossible to respect.
In December, the Department of Health ordered that the yeshivos of Williamsburg and Boro Park – where the measles outbreak in New York was the most heavily concentrated – ban unvaccinated students and maintain records of the same. badistance and vaccination at the request of the inspectors.
Ten Yeshivos or Williamsburg play groups have since been closed, either for failing to exclude unvaccinated students or for not keeping proper records for inspection purposes, including one that was closed on Tuesday. The remaining nine were allowed to reopen after taking corrective action.
The measles outbreak, which began in New York in October, reached 588 confirmed cases on Tuesday, including 437 in Williamsburg and 100 in Boro Park. But the disease has spread more slowly recently; there were only five confirmed cases in Williamsburg between last Monday and last Tuesday.
The communal leaders told Hamodia that the schools were doing their best to comply with the vaccination order, but were often not able to do it fully as part of what they described as a plan quickly put in place that called for significant changes.
"The city has changed dramatically from one minute to the next," said Rabbi Moshe Dovid Niederman, president of the United Jewish Organizations of Williamsburg and Brooklyn north of Brooklyn last month. "All mosdos have children who have benefited from exemptions for one reason or another and now, schools gathering hundreds – and some of the thousands of students – have been informed that they could leave no unvaccinated children to participate, even with an exemption. In addition to that, there were many new papers that were required on short notice. Everyone is doing their best to comply, but the mosdos are confused on some points and the staff of the Department of Health itself is confused. We found ourselves at the center of the storm and many schools simply were not able to react as quickly as we asked them.
On Thursday, the ministry announced the closure of two other schools in Williamsburg, one "for failing to provide sufficient evidence of the immunity of a child present at school and for leaving children and non-school staff vaccinated on the spot ", and the other – which had already been closed and allowed to reopen -" for having allowed 35 unvaccinated or failed to receive the required number of doses of the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine ( ROR) to go to school ".
But a source close to the schools, who spoke to Hamodia on condition of anonymity, not being allowed to speak on their behalf, said the closures were the result of a set of rules. ambiguous and constantly evolving.
The Department of Health requires a dose of MMR vaccine for children in day care and preschool and two doses for children in kindergarten to grade 12. (This condition is also fulfilled if a student presents blood test results showing immunity to measles.)
Chbadidishe yeshivos use names different from those of other schools in their grading systems, but inspectors have always considered that the youngest age group in these schools – which includes students as young as 4 ½ years – was before kindergarten. But Thursday, according to this source, the inspector said that these grades are not considered to be prior to kindergarten. therefore, students who had only received one dose of the vaccine were no longer in compliance.
For the staff member who did not have a vaccination record, the source indicates that he was not a regular school staff member, but a representative of a community organization who was Thursday to help with paperwork. It is a coincidence that it was a paperwork related to measles order compliance. The individual was vaccinated but did not carry his record.
"Schools closed today have a zero tolerance policy towards unvaccinated children," the source told Hamodia. "Yet we are facing an endless barrage of daily inspections and reinspections, unfounded accusations and obtaining different instructions and new guidelines from different non-recourse inspectors.
"Closing programs, supposedly for unvaccinated children, is actually a clerical problem and is often a mistake or contradictory guidance from different divisions of the health department.
"This witch hunt does not help anyone and only hinder efforts to end the measles outbreak."
A spokesman for the health department told Hamodia that clbadrooms for children ages 5 and 6 are defined as kindergarten clbades.
"Measles is a life-threatening and highly contagious disease," said the spokesman. "To ensure the well-being of some of our most vulnerable New Yorkers, children, we need these orders to be followed. The closure of a school is not an action we take lightly, but we are ready to take them depending on the seriousness of the situation and the protection of children. "
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