KIRYAS JOEL – Dr. Vladimir Zelenko may be a “respected health care provider,” but he is spreading misinformation about the coronavirus in the Village of Kiryas Joel. That statement came Tuesday in a letter to Zelenko for leaders of the village through their Office of Emergency Management.
The letter said the doctor’s YouTube videos “are putting our community in an unfair and undeserved spotlight.” They also said he should stop referring to his patients as “Hasidic Jews or Kiryas Joel residents, in any public setting.”
The village officials said for the last week, all schools, synagogues, libraries and ritual bathhouses have been closed, and more distancing is being practiced throughout the community.
Those measures have resulted in a rate of 90 percent of the community being healthy, the opposite of Zelenko’s “outrageous prediction of a 90 percent infection rate,” they wrote.
“All data indicates that the infection rate in Kiryas Joel is mirroring the rest of Orange County, and therefore should not be a cause for panic, or the singling out of one community,” the officials said.
