Mumps Outbreak Hits Orthodox Kids
A mumps outbreak in New York and New Jersey in which 97 percent of the more than 3,500 cases were Orthodox Jews and most male was a result of the way the boys are schooled, according to a new study.
A study on the June 2009 to June 2010 outbreak in New York City, two upstate New York counties and one New Jersey county home to a high percentage of Orthodox Jews appears in the Nov. 1 2012 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.
Adolescents 13 years to 17 years of age, representing 27 percent of all the patients, and males, representing 78 percent of patients in that age group, were disproportionately affected, according to the study abstract. Most of the boys had been vaccinated against the disease.
Most of the boys that contracted the disease studied in Jewish yeshiva high schools, “where students spend many hours daily in intense, face-to-face interaction,” according to the study abstract, leading to the mumps’ spread.
The study concluded that “intense exposures, particularly among boys in schools, facilitated transmission and overcame vaccine-induced protection in these patients.”
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a gift today!
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Dive In
-
Fast Forward For the first time since Henry VIII created the role, a Jew will helm Hebrew studies at Cambridge
-
Fast Forward Argentine Supreme Court discovers over 80 boxes of forgotten Nazi documents
-
Fast Forward What’s next for suspended student who posted ‘F— the Jews’ video? An alt-right media tour
-
Fast Forward ‘New Jersey tough’: Gov. Phil Murphy on released Hamas hostage Edan Alexander, a Tenafly native
Most Popular
- 1
Fast Forward Ye debuts ‘Heil Hitler’ music video that includes a sample of a Hitler speech
- 2
Opinion It looks like Israel totally underestimated Trump
- 3
Culture Is Pope Leo Jewish? Ask his distant cousins — like me
- 4
Fast Forward Student suspended for ‘F— the Jews’ video defends himself on antisemitic podcast
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward For the first time since Henry VIII created the role, a Jew will helm Hebrew studies at Cambridge
-
Fast Forward Argentine Supreme Court discovers over 80 boxes of forgotten Nazi documents
-
News In Edan Alexander’s hometown in New Jersey, months of fear and anguish give way to joy and relief
-
Fast Forward What’s next for suspended student who posted ‘F— the Jews’ video? An alt-right media tour
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.