COVID outbreak in Canadian Jewish community caused by people fleeing America
Image by Wikimedia
MONTREAL (JTA) — Jewish Canadians streaming from Florida to outrun the coronavirus and beat the pre-Passover rush unwittingly helped stoke one of the highest virus-positive rates in Quebec province.
Cote St. Luc, a Montreal suburb with the densest and most elderly Jewish population in Quebec, reported some of earliest cases and has declared a state of emergency.
According to news reports, too many of the snowbirds were bent on restocking their pantries and refrigerators instead of directly self-quarantining for 14 days in their homes as mandated by provincial authorities. The infection rate is so high, a virus test center opened Sunday in the parking lot of a Cote St. Luc shopping mall.
One-third of the city’s population is over 65.
As a public service during this pandemic, the Forward is providing free, unlimited access to all coronavirus articles. If you’d like to support our independent Jewish journalism, click here.
On Sunday in Boisbriand, a Hasidic enclave of 4,000 just north of Montreal, community leaders begged authorities to help them enforce a 14-day quarantine. According to reports, some members traveled to New York for the Purim holiday and helped spread the virus at a 40 percent infection rate in their own community upon return.
As is the case everywhere, Canada’s Jews are struggling with the virus. All schools, synagogues and institutions are physically closed as Jewish federations figure out ways to deal “virtually” and in other ways with the crisis. Jewish nursing homes are allowing only deathbed visits.
The post Jewish Canadians returning home from US cause spike in coronavirus rates appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
