New York Judge Rules Unvaccinated Children Can't Return to School Amid Measles Outbreak
There is no scientific link between vaccines and autism, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
A federal judge in New York has ruled not to lift a ban which would have allowed 40 unvaccinated children to return to school, where they have been barred for months amid a county-wide measles outbreak.
The Rockland County health commissioner said in December that unvaccinated students at any school in the county with less than a 95 percent vaccination rate must stay home until the outbreak’s end, according to Rockland/Westchester Journal News.
Families from the Green Meadow Waldorf School in Chestnut Ridge, N.Y. subsequently filed suit against the Rockland Health Department and its commissioner, claiming a ban against the children violated religious objections, according to the outlet.
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“Preventing my child from being with his class, his teacher, his classroom has had a significant social and psychological impact,” a mother whose child has missed 90 days of school told New York CBS 2.
According to the outlet, parents have argued that the county’s 95 percent “exclusion order” should not apply to Green Meadow, since there have been no measles cases reported among Green Meadow students.
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The Journal News reports Green Meadow’s vaccination rate was 33 percent when the exclusion order was put in place, and has since risen to 56 percent.
As of March 13, there were 146 confirmed measles cases in Rockland County, which has a significant population of Orthodox Jewish families and others who do not vaccinate their children. Of those 146 cases, 82 percent of the children affected are unvaccinated. The current outbreak is the largest in the state of New York since 1989, according to News 12 Westchester.
The County Health Department issued a statement in November urging parents to vaccinate their children in an effort to prevent the outbreak from spreading further.
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“We continue to encourage everyone to be up-to-date with the MMR vaccine to help protect them in case of any future exposure to measles in Rockland. Measles is highly contagious, so anyone who is not protected against measles is at risk of getting the disease, and they may spread measles to people who cannot get vaccinated because they are too young or have specific health conditions,” said Rockland County Executive Ed Day and County Health Commission Dr. Patricia Schnabel Ruppert.
