(Stock photo: DepositPhotos)
No shot, no school. That's the wave-off for Derby Middle School families in Birmingham.
Free Press reporter Kristen Jordan Shamus has an update on education in the time of measles:
Birmingham Public Schools said it is following guidelines from the Oakland County Health Division in requiring students who are not vaccinated and those who are under-vaccinated to stay home from school for 21 days after the date of exposure to try to limit the spread of the highly contagious virus. . . .
"The health and well-being of our students are top priority and we are adhering to health guidelines set by our county and state," the statement said. . . .
[A] Derby Middle School student who contracted the virus is just one case in a widening Michigan measles outbreak that has infected 41 people so far this year in the state
The suburban district's concern is well-grounded.
Fourteen of Derby's 293 seventh-graders had vaccine waivers in 2017, according to its latest available figures. That means they enrolled despite lacking some or all of disease vaccines required to attend school in Michigan.
Only one of those waivers was for a medical reason, such as immune deficiency, Shamus reports.
Six vaccine exemptions were granted for religious reasons and seven were for philosophical reasons.
Thirty-nine of the state's confirmed measles patients in Oakland County. "A growing number of parents [there] are declining to vaccinate their children," education reporter Kob Levin writes Tuesday in a Chalkbeat Detroit newletter. "But the vaccine is less dangerous than the disease itself."
Elsewhere, New York City declared a public health emergency Tuesday in and ordered mandatory measles vaccinations for unvaccinated adults and kids in four Brooklyn zip codes with a concentration of Orthodox Jews -- including for infants as young as 6 months. Anyone who resists could be fined up to $1,000.
At least 246 youngsters an d 39 adults have contracted the disease in the city since September 2018, mostly in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg neighborhood. Twenty-one patients have been hospitalized, with five ending up in intensive care. It's the largest outbreak in the city in nearly three decades.
Williamsburg "is the epicenter of a measles outbreak that is very, very troubling and must be dealt with immediately," Mayor Bill de Blasio said, according to The Washington Post.
"The measles vaccine works. It is safe, it is effective, it is time-tested. . . .The faster everyone heeds the order, the faster we can lift it."
to halt an outbreak concentrated among ultra-Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn
