May 24-30, 2019 Your Neighborhood — Your News®
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Queens prepares for measles cases
Flushing yeshiva reopens after city shutdown, local hospital gears up for any outbreak
measles virus.”
The Yeshiva of Central
Queens was cleared to reopen
Monday, according to the
Health Department.
Measles starts with a high
fever and soon after, it causes
a cough, runny nose and red
eyes then a rash of tiny spots
breaks out, according to the
CDC. It starts in the head and
spreads to the rest of the body
and it could lead to pneumonia,
encephalitis and death.
“If you’re exposed and
unvaccinated you’re likely to
get it,” Amato said.
She said there has been a
rise in recent years of people
who aren’t vaccinated because
of non-medical reasons in the
United States.
“There was a widely
circulated study that linked
vaccinations to autism that has
been debunked several times,”
Amato said. “Therefore we’re
seeing diseases return after
we thought they were gone,
like measles. Viruses are very
smart. They want to live.”
A TASTE OF GREECE IN FLUSHING
Vol. 28 No. 21 64 total pages
BY BILL PARRY
Queens could be the next
measles hot zone and one
hospital is already practicing
protocols learned during the
Ebola crisis.
LIJ Forest Hills has
begun screening before they
are allowed to enter the
building after a new study
showed that Queens county is
ranked fourth in the country
for a likely outbreak of the
measles virus.
“Here in Queens, we meet
all four criteria,” Dr. Teresa
Amato, chair of emergency
medicine at LIJ Forest Hills
said. “We have a dense
population, and two airports
where people are coming in
from high incident areas.
We’re also an area with a
high number of unvaccinated
people and we’re a hot spot next
to a hot spot in Brooklyn.”
The authors of The Lancet
Infectious Diseases warned
that hot spots “could serve
as a fulcrum of continuous
importation of the measles
virus into the USA.” This
year, the United States has
seen the highest number of
confirmed cases since measles
was declared eliminated in
the country in 2000.
“If you had told me when
I got into the health care
business that we would be
facing a measles outbreak
in 2019, I would have been
shocked,” Amato said. “All of
Northwell Health is screening
people before entering. We ask
if they have a cough, fever or
rash. If they say yes, we ask
if they have been vaccinated
and have they been exposed.
If they have, they are put
into isolation because it is
so highly contagious. The
virus can live in the air for up
to 2 hours.”
The Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention
says the measles virus is so
contagious that it one person
has it, up to 90 percent of the
people around him or her will
become infected if they are
not protected.
Last week, the city’s
Department of Health closed
down The Yeshiva of Central
Queens in Kew Gardens
Hills for non-compliance of
the citywide order aimed
at curbing the ongoing
measles outbreak.
The school’s attorney
Jonathan Farrell said in a
statement that the “audit of
the yeshiva was triggered by
a single individual, who is an
outside vendor of the yeshiva
who was present on yeshiva’s
premises after apparently
being exposed to the
City Councilman Paul Vallone joined the thousands of people who enjoyed four days of
Mediterranean fun at the Greek Orthodox Shrine Church of St. Nicholas Greek Festival on May
16-19. Photo via Twitter/@PaulVallone
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