#NYC to crack down on COVID-19 ‘clusters’ in Brooklyn: de Blasio

The city is ramping up efforts to crackdown on coronavirus “clusters” in Brooklyn — with a “serious uptick” in cases popping up in predominantly Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Wednesday.

The mayor pointed out two areas of concern with dense Jewish populations at his press briefing: the Ocean Parkway cluster, encompassing Midwood, Borough Park and Bensonhurst, and a cluster in Williamsburg.

The Edgemere-Far Rockaway area and Kew Gardens are also seeing a surge in COVID-19.

“We have a lot to do because we’re seeing a serious uptick in multiple neighborhoods simultaneously and it’s something we have to address with a very aggressive public health effort right away,” de Blasio said.

The four “clusters” account for 20 percent of all positive cases citywide as of Sept. 19.

De Blasio, however, appeared to avoid describing the affected neighborhoods as largely Orthodox — which a reporter grilled him on later in the briefing.

“I think we’re being very clear about where the challenge is and we want to work with communities to stop it,” the mayor responded.

Health officials have already begun to raise awareness of preventing the spread of COVID-19, making 200,000 robocalls in Yiddish and English to neighborhoods like Borough Park, Bensonhurst, Midwood, Crown Heights, Forest Hills and the Rockaways and touching base with physicians in Crown Heights to spread awareness, according to Dr. Mitch Katz, of NYC Health + Hospitals.

About 13,000 masks have been distributed in Borough Park, Bensonhurst, Williamsburg, Brighton Beach and Flushing, Katz said, and 20 leaders of synagogues in Borough Park and Williamsburg have also been reached.

Katz said the plan is continue talking to “high-level religious community members” about coronavirus prevention.

Asked how far the city was willing to go to stop the rising numbers, de Blasio noted that two Yeshivas were recently closed down but didn’t say which ones or where.

“We’ll take whatever measures are necessary to stop this from spreading,” he added.

De Blasio said the upswing in cases shouldn’t affect the resumption of in-person learning at schools in those neighborhoods beginning next week.

“It’s something we, obviously, are all keeping a close eye on. The real issue — since we have a constant look at what’s happening in each school — is to watch for upticks in the specific school community,” he said.

Katz, meanwhile, revealed that the issue hits close to home, following the death of his father-in-law in Israel two nights ago from coronavirus.

“I know many of us have lost people that we love and the added burden of this is then we can’t engage in the usual rites that we would engage in at times that would be really hard, like bringing large numbers of people together for a funeral,” Katz said. “We weren’t able to do that for him.”

He said Israel being under lockdown because of a surge in COVID-19 should serve as a cautionary tale for New Yorkers.

“We don’t want that. We want people to wear masks, we want them to stay apart, to not have any large gatherings,” he said.