1 kid led to wave of measles

“Disease detectives” working for the city’s Department of Health are interviewing patients with measles and so far have generated a list of 11,000 people who’ve been in contact with those infected.

The plan is to reach out to everyone on the list, but he walth officials weren’t sure on Friday how many they’d called, even as the city struggles to get the number of measles cases under control.

As of Tuesday, there have been 285 cases of measles reported in New York City since September. There are between 15 and 20 Health Department officials who’ve been designated as disease detectives who are focused on tracking the virus’ spread.

Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, the agency’s deputy commissioner of disease control, said city officials believed in January that the outbreak was beginning to wind down, but that one case in February in a Williamsburg yeshiva renewed the cycle of infection.

The school, he said, did not follow the city’s edict to exclude children who had not been vaccinated from attending.

“And that one school didn’t follow the exclusion, and ultimately, what happened was a kid was in school who was un-vaccinated,” Daskalakis (photo) said. “They gave measles to every — almost every — unvaccinated student in that school. And the other kids that had the measles then went home and gave it to their siblings and other folks in their neighborhood. And that really is what rekindled the entire Williamsburg fire that we’re currently dealing with.”

Daskalakis noted that most of the yeshivas have complied with the exclusion order.