In the course of about a month, the Hasidic village of Kiryas Joel,
N.Y., managed to drop its rate of positive tests for coronavirus
infection by a dramatic 30 points — from 34.2% in the last week of
September, to 4.2% this week, according to state data released
Wednesday.
Town leaders and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo chalked the change up to
the effect of coronavirus restrictions in Kiryas Joel, after Cuomo
designated it a “red” zone on October 6, requiring schools and
nonessential businesses to close, and for worship services to be capped
at 10 people.
But Dr. Irina Gelman, the health commissioner for Orange County,
which includes Kiryas Joel, a dense town of 26,000, has a different
explanation: Village residents with coronavirus symptoms are refusing to
get tested.
She said in emails to the Forward that doctors from hospitals,
primary care providers and urgent cares have told her, as well as the
state’s task force to stem the spread of coronavirus, that people
showing coronavirus symptoms are foregoing tests altogether, including
for flu and strep throat.
“This is not a typical declination in percent positive rate, which
would be more gradual and over a longer period of time,” Gelman wrote in
response to emailed questions. “I suspect there is some degree of
correlation between the physician reported patient refusal to test and
the dramatic decline in the currently reported test positive percent.”
Gelman says further investigation is needed before she can determine
what exactly caused what she called the “drastic” drop in Kiryas Joel’s
positive rate.
But she said that the village has seen a decline in the overall
number of coronavirus tests administered to residents, even as
hospitalizations have increased — two signs that the actual rate of
coronavirus infection in the village has either not decreased at the
rate suggested by the reported percentage of positive tests, or is in
fact increasing.
Gelman’s office did not provide recent data on hospitalizations,
total test volume or percent positive test rate from Kiryas Joel or its
ZIP code, which includes the largely non-Hasidic town of Monroe.
Publicly available data
for all of Orange County shows that overall tests have dropped somewhat
over the past two weeks. The county’s rate of hospitalizations related
to COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, has also ticked up since the middle of September.
A representative for the New York Department of Health did not
respond to emailed questions about Kiryas Joel’s data or Gelman’s
assertions.
Gedalye Szegedin, the town administrator for Kiryas Joel, did not comment after being contacted by the Forward.
Two major health providers serving Kiryas Joel did not respond to requests for comment.
Joel Petlin, the head of Kiryas Joel’s public school, which serves
children with special needs, said that even if some residents are
refusing coronavirus tests, discomfort with the tests is widespread.
“I don’t know that that problem is a uniquely KJ issue,” he said,
using a common abbreviation for Kiryas Joel. “It’s probably a problem
throughout the state and the country, for people who don’t want to be
tested because of the intrusion, or don’t feel they’re overly sick.”
When asked why a Kiryas Joel resident might refuse a coronavirus test, Petlin said, “Because they’re human.”
Kiryas Joel is one of several designated red zones throughout the New
York City region with high rates of positive coronavirus tests, all of
which center around areas with large Orthdoox communities. Red zones
face the harshest restrictions, with “orange” and “yellow” zones facing
somewhat relaxed restrictions.
Orthodox Jews have repeatedly expressed frustration and anger at the
restrictions, saying that the community felt unfairly singled out by
Cuomo, and that the restrictions were unnecessary and overly burdensome.
On Wednesday, Cuomo relaxed restrictions on two once-red zones, in
the borough of Queens. The red zones in Kiryas Joel, as well as the ones
centered on the upstate Hasidic community of Monsey and in South
Brooklyn, will remain intact, Cuomo said, because they did not fall
below the state’s designated 3% threshold for positive coronavirus
tests. Orange zones around those red zones have been downgraded to
yellow, allowing schools and nonessential businesses to open.
“We have it managed,” Cuomo said. “We know how to do this.”
Despite Kiryas Joel’s reported drop in positive coronavirus cases,
its positive test rate suggests that the village is still in a
precarious place, and requires continued restrictions, said David
Abramson, a professor of public health at New York University.
“The 34 number is an extremely high number. In fact it’s a
set-your-hair-on-fire number,” Abramson. “The four is still much higher
than we’d be comfortable with.”
Abramson said that in this second wave of the virus in the New York
City region, younger people are expected to be infected at a higher rate
than older people. In an overwhelmingly young, densely populated
village like Kiryas Joel — about 61% of the village is under 18,
according to Census data from 2019 — that could mean wide infections with few hospitalizations.
But, Abramson said, “If the number of hospitalizations is not going
down, but the test rate is dropping, they’re probably trying to limit
the number of tests that they take.”
Orthodox neighborhoods in New York City have seen less testing
than others, despite having high rates of positive coronavirus tests,
which health experts worry could mean that these hotspots are hotter
than the data suggest.
Orthodox residents have received robocalls and text messages urging
them to avoid testing so as to game the health data, according to audio and text messages obtained by the Forward.
In Brooklyn’s Borough Park, home to a diverse Orthodox Jewish community, one Yiddish robocall told residents
that “even if they force you, even if they beat you like the Jews in
Israel, and especially not voluntarily, and one must also not go get
tested because this raises the statistics in our neighborhoods.”
Gelman said that doctors have told her that their patients are
refusing tests for many reasons. Some believe their community either has
or should achieve herd immunity, the point at which enough people in
Kiryas Joel have contracted the coronavirus and developed antibodies to
prevent its spread.
Others may have heard misinformation that one cannot be infected
twice with the disease, or are simply experiencing “pandemic-related
fatigue” over medical intrusions, Gelman said.
Health experts have said that herd immunity from the coronavirus is
likely impossible, since antibodies developed by those who have it often
wear off after several months. Abramson said that trying to achieve
herd immunity is akin to playing “Russian roulette.”
Petlin suggested that Gelman’s statements might stoke antisemitism,
pointing to early spikes in the virus in upstate Hasidic communities in
the spring that led to instances of antisemitism in the area and an anti-Orthodox backlash on social media, even though he said he did not believe that was her intention.
In an emailed response to the question of whether she is concerned
that her statements could stoke antisemitism in the county, Gelman said
that the county’s health department “takes the health and safety of all
of our residents very seriously, even more so during the worst public
health crisis in a century.”
“These are not anecdotal accounts, and there is an inherent, serious
population-wide health risk that impacts all residents of our county,”
Gelman added.
Ari Feldman is a staff writer at the Forward. Contact him at feldman@forward.com or follow him on Twitter @aefeldman
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