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This real-life drama seems like medical detective work worth a screenplay. Its characters are a contagious traveler from Brooklyn, an Orthodox Jewish health team and Oakland County officials with reason to worry.
Lena H. Sun, a national health reporter for The Washington Post, reconstructs what she calls "a cautionary tale" about how measles spreads:
Last month, a traveler raising money for charity in Brooklyn's ultra-Orthodox Jewish community drove through the night to Detroit — his next fundraising stop. He felt sick en route and saw a doctor when he got there. But the doctor, who had never seen measles, misdiagnosed the man's fever and cough as bronchitis.
During the next two weeks, the traveler would become Michigan's Patient Zero, spreading the highly contagious respiratory virus to 39 people as he stayed in private homes, attended synagogue daily and shopped in kosher markets. . . .
"Every one of our cases has had a link to the initial case," said Leigh-Anne Stafford, health officer for Oakland County.
Her agency scrambled after hearing from the doctor involved, who later "worried about the possibility of measles" because the patient called back a day later and reported a rash. Officials don't identify the physician or traveler.
The doctor "decided to leave a voice message for the health department with the man’s cellphone number," Sun writes.
Health officials jumped on the case — but couldn't reach the man because of a problem with his cellphone.
They turned to Steve McGraw, head of Oakland emergency medical services and longtime member of the Detroit-area Hatzalah, the ultra-Orthodox community’s emergency medical response group, an all-volunteer effort with deep ties to many families. McGraw alerted rabbinical leaders, then jumped in his car and drove to the area the traveler was supposed to be staying to look for the man’s rental car, a blue sedan . . .
Hatzalah members and rabbinical leaders also mobilized to search for the traveler, who was staying in a neighborhood guesthouse.
Hatzalah, a volunteer group, handles emergency medical response for the ultra-Orthodox community locally.
They found him in a few hours and got daunting news.
The traveler, as it turned out, had had hundreds of contacts with community members that health officials needed to trace.
He had stayed mostly in private homes in the areas of Oak Park and Southfield. He had visited synagogues three times a day to pray and study and frequented kosher markets and pizza parlors, among 30 locations in one week.
"This guy was walking around all over the community and contagious," McGraw said. "We knew we had a really significant exposure."
Religious leaders worked with the county to respond, as The Post decsribes. The Council of Orthodox Rabbis of Greater Detroit issued a statement saying Jewish law obligated every community member to be "properly and fully vaccinated."
The Hatzalah and rabbinical leaders helped the health department set up three clinics at one synagogue, immunizing nearly 1,000 people in one week. As of early April, health officials have given more than 2,100 vaccinations.
Vaccine refusal does not appear to be a major factor in the Oakland County cluster, officials said. . . .
Close collaboration between health officials and the religious community appears to have controlled the spread of the disease.
-- Alan Stamm
