By: AP & TJVNews.com

New York’s governor announced Tuesday he is sending the National Guard into a New York City suburb to help fight what is believed to be the nation’s biggest cluster of coronavirus cases — one of the most dramatic actions yet to control the outbreak in the U.S.

The move came as health authorities contended with alarming concentrations of the disease on both sides of the country and scattered cases in between.

Schools, houses of worship and large gathering places will be shuttered for two weeks in a “containment area” centered in New Rochelle, and the troops will scrub surfaces and deliver food to the zone, which extends a mile in all directions from a point near a synagogue connected to some of the cases, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said.

“It is a dramatic action, but it is the largest cluster of cases in the country,” Cuomo said. “The numbers are going up unabated, and we do need a special public health strategy.”

New Rochelle is at the center of an outbreak of 108 cases in Westchester County, out of 173 identified statewide. New York City has 36 cases, while its population is more than 100 times that of New Rochelle.

Rabbi Reuven Fink, of the Young Israel of New Rochelle temple, is among the 44 confirmed cases in the state, according to a statement posted Friday on the website of Yeshiva University, where Fink teaches two courses. The state confirmed 22 new cases Friday, doubling the number from a day earlier.

“I can now reassure you that it is possible, Thank G-d, to get through this virus without a special vaccine. I have the virus and am doing reasonably well,” Fink wrote in an email to synagogue members, according to a letter posted online. “But I must caution all of you who have had personal contact with me to seek counsel from your health practitioner as to how to proceed.”

Many members of Fink’s congregation were asked to self-quarantine earlier in the week after the hospitalization of a person in the synagogue’s community, a 50-year-old lawyer who works in Manhattan. Since then, a growing number of friends and relatives of the lawyer have tested positive.

Rabbi Fink’s son Avi is the Chief of Staff at New York City Mayor Bill DeBlasio’s Office of Management and Budget. Avi Fink, 35, who resides in Queens, has tested negative for the Coronavirus and is in excellent health.

Most of the new cases announced Friday were connected to the Westchester case or were suspected of being related to it, according to Gov. Andrew Cuomo. The governor said the cases from that suburban county included a 7-year-old boy and an 82-year-old man.

The list of new cases connected to the Westchester case includes a person in New York City, three members of the congregation, two friends, two people in nearby Rockland County who worked at a bat mitzvah at the synagogue and three cases related to the lawyer’s initial hospitalization in Westchester County, according to Cuomo.

Officials in Rockland County said the man and woman there were at home and doing well.

Three cases announced late Friday from Nassau County are also suspected of being related to an existing case.

Fink had isolated himself as a precaution earlier in the week, telling congregants in a Facebook posting that following the quarantine order is “a sacred obligation that we all must take very seriously.”

The upper Manhattan campus of Yeshiva University was already closed through Friday because the stricken lawyer’s son is a student there and has also tested positive for the virus. The university said it was advising Fink’s students to self-quarantine until further notice.

Cuomo said about 4,000 people across the state are in a precautionary quarantine, all but 300 in New York City and Westchester County. Another 44 people were in mandatory quarantine.

Cuomo said the lesson from the suburban outbreak is how easily the virus can spread when people gather.

“You can have one large gathering — 400, 500 people in a gathering — and you can infect a number of people,” Cuomo said.

Health officials had said earlier that people who attended services at the suburban synagogue on Feb. 22, and a funeral and a bat mitzvah on Feb. 23, must self-quarantine.

It was recently reported by Jewish Voice reporter Veronica Kordmany that the Keio Academy in Westchester County has announced it will close its doors for the rest of the academic school year due to the rapid spread of the Coronavirus. The boarding school has not reported any confirmed cases of the virus.

The decision came after reports from the Rockland/Westchester Journal News said that the virus has spread to at least 82 people across Westchester.

Japan, which a portion of the school’s international population hails from, currently has 502 confirmed cases of the virus, and six people there have died from it — putting it in the top 10 countries globally who have been the hardest hit. There is also a Keio Academy in Japan, which the Westchester school is affiliated with.

“After consideration of all the medical facts and advice, the Board of Trustees has decided that it must act now in the interests of our students’ safety and wellbeing,” Rieko Ivy, director of development at the school, said in a statement.

Out of the entire student body, only 320 students, or 10%, resides in the local area. The rest are from other parts of the United States, as well as Europe, South Asia, and South America.

This decision comes after three cases were reported in New Rochelle’s Jewish day schools, causing them to close for an indeterminable amount of time. The schools are the Salanter Akiba Riverdale (SAR) Academy in the Bronx, the Westchester Day School in Mamaroneck, and the Westchester Torah Academy in White Plains.

Westchester is considered to be the ‘worst-hit’ county in New York, with an overwhelming 69 total cases. Almost all of them have been traced back to Midtown lawyer Lawrence Garbuz.

In terms of school closings, the Jewish Voice editorial staff penned a powerful opinion piece on the subject.

The editorial stated, “ We must transition all schools to online and video classes immediately. Some may consider this move to be premature and wish to wait to see more cases of disease. However, leading epidemiologist Dr. Jay Schnitzer and prominent voices in his profession have unequivocally stated that this is an erroneous notion and is not supported by prior experience. We must close the schools before a larger outbreak occurs. This means all schools, from daycare centers, public schools, private schools, yeshivas and parochial schools as well as all colleges, universities and vocational schools.

“Some may ask why we need to close the schools if young people are not as affected by this virus. The answer is that schools are one of the key routes that viruses cross-infect a community such as ours. The students then infect adults and the elderly at home, synagogue and other locations. We must think of the needs of our multi-generational community.”

Among the schools that are closing and opting to offer online classes are the Frisch School in Paramus, SAR High School & SAR Academy, New York City, Westchester Day School, New York, The Brearley School, New York City, Riverdale Country School, New York City, East Ramapo NY, Hempstead Elementary School, Pomona Middle School, Chestnut Ridge Middle School, Spring Valley High School, Ramapo High School, Shoreham-Wading River School District, Scarsdale School District, Somers School District and Plainview School District.

Moreover, it was reported in the Daily Mail of the UK that Harvard University has become the latest college to move its instruction online in a bid to combat the spread of coronavirus after Fordham University and Princeton University made the same decision on Monday.

According to a statement on the school’s website, Harvard University has asked its students not to return to campus after Spring Break ‘and to meet academic requirements remotely until further notice’.

Officials from the university said they will begin moving to virtual instruction for graduate and undergraduate classes amid the coronavirus outbreak.

‘We are transitioning over the course of the next few days to non-essential gatherings of no more than 25 people,’ the university said.

In Oakland, California, meanwhile, thousands of increasingly bored and restless passengers aboard a cruise ship struck by the coronavirus waited their turn to get off the vessel and go to U.S. military bases or back to their home countries for two weeks of quarantine. In Washington state, where at least 19 deaths have been connected to a Seattle-area nursing home, Gov. Jay Inslee announced new rules for screening health care workers and limiting visitors.

“If we assume there are 1,000 or more people who have the virus today … the number of people who are infected will double in five to eight days,” he warned.

The virus has infected over 700 people in the U.S. and killed at least 27, with one state after another recording its first infections in quick succession. New Jersey recorded its first coronavirus death.

In California, passengers from the coronavirus-stricken Grand Princess were allowed off the vessel and walked to the bottom of a ramp, where masked officials in yellow protective gear and blue plastic gloves took their temperature and led them to a tent for more screening before they lined up to board a bus.

After days of being forced to idle off the Northern California coast, the ship docked Monday at Oakland with about 3,500 passengers and crew, including at least 21 who tested positive for the new virus.

“We’re trying to stay calm and were trying to stay positive, but it’s getting harder and harder. They can’t make up their minds how to keep us safe,” said passenger Beryl Ward, 77, of Santa Fe, New Mexico.

The slow evacuation of the 951-foot (290-meter) ship began Monday with several hundred people let off the ship. About two dozen people who needed acute medical care were taken off first, though it was unclear how many of them were infected, California emergency authorities said. Also, more than 200 Canadians on board were flown to a military base in their country, Canadian officials said.

On the ship, about 2,000 passengers, including hundreds of Californians, were still aboard Tuesday morning.

Authorities said foreign passengers would be flown home, while U.S. passengers would be flown or bused to military bases in California, Texas and Georgia for testing and 14-day quarantines.

The Grand Princess ship had been held off the coast since last week because of evidence that it was the breeding ground for more than 20 infections tied to a previous voyage. Passengers were mostly confined to their cabins.

But Ward’s cabin mate, Carolyn Wright, 63, also of Santa Fe, said she looked out her cabin window as passengers lined up to depart and also saw people in yellow protective clothing, gloves and hazardous materials suits.

“They were queuing up the passengers like cattle,” Wright said.

“Everybody was bunched up. They were physically touching each other and they were backed up along the gangplank.”

She added: “I’m just totally freaked out by that. It’s outrageous. If that’s safe, then why were we stuck in our rooms? It’s been stressed for the past five days that we’re not to have any contact with any other passengers?”

About 1,100 crew members, 19 of whom tested positive for the virus, will be quarantined and treated aboard the ship, which will dock elsewhere after passengers are unloaded, Gov. Gavin Newsom said. He and Oakland’s mayor sought to reassure people that no passengers would be exposed to the public before completing quarantine.

Another Princess ship, the Diamond Princess, was quarantined for two weeks in Yokohama, Japan, last month because of the virus. Ultimately, about 700 of the 3,700 people aboard became infected in what experts pronounced a public health failure.

Elsewhere around the country, the United Nations said it will close its headquarters in New York to the public and suspend all guided tours. On Wall Street, stocks climbed higher during the day, recouping some of their staggering losses from the day before,

For most people, the virus causes only mild or moderate symptoms such as fever and cough. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia. Most people recover in a matter of weeks, as has happened with three-quarters of those infected in mainland China.

             (AP & TJVNews.com)