Rockland exec issues second state of emergency over measles

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NEW CITY – Rockland County Executive Edwin Day issued a second local state of emergency renewing the original declaration that was set to expire today (Thursday) at 11:59 p.m. The renewed declaration will run through the end of the day on Saturday, May 25.

“Over the last 30 days since my original declaration we have lost the one thing we couldn’t afford to lose, valuable time,” he said. The county has seen nearly 50 new cases of measles in less than a month confirming what his administration had predicted, that “this outbreak continues to rage despite the best efforts of our department of health.”

Day said the disagreement among courts “has undoubtedly caused confusion and contributed to this situation continuing,” but he pledged the county would do everything within its power to combat and stop the outbreak.

The new health commissioner order has two components:

  • Schools and daycare centers are required to exclude from classes students that have been identified as having neither a valid certificate of immunization on file for the MMR vaccines or laboratory evidence of immunity against measles, mumps and rubella, nor a valid medical or religious exemption on file.
  • Schools and daycare centers are required to submit to the health department a notarized affidavit sworn under penalty of perjury or if unable to take an oath, a notarized affirmation affirming under penalties of perjury, identifying students who have been excluded from the school or daycare center.

Failure to comply can result in a $2,000 fine per violation per day.

The order was delivered to 16 affected schools on April 16. To date, 19,279 MMR vaccinations have been given in Rockland County since the outbreak began in October 2018. That number has increased by 2,321 since the original state of emergency was announced on March 26.




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