This news takes the phrase "hot spots" in an ugly direction. A new study has listed which NYC hoods have the highest STD rates, and the results might surprise you.
Let's start with syphilis. The Department of Health says that Murray Hill, SoHo, and the Upper West Side have around 10 times more syphilis-infected residents than average. About 125 people from a sample of 100,000 tested positive for the sexually transmitted disease in just those three neighborhoods.
The study also showed that Bronx's Tremont section has the city's highest STD rates.
The report, which contains data from 2010, reveals the areas of New York with the highest rates of HIV, gonorrhea, chlamydia, and hepatitis B and C. Here are some of the shocking results:
* The Bronx is the borough where you’d least like to have a one-night stand. Roughly 68 percent of neighborhoods in the borough were found to have “high” rates of more than one STD.
* Staten Island is the healthiest place to hook up. Not a single neighborhood in the borough made the agency’s top-20 list for STDs.
* Thirteen out of 20 of the neighborhoods with the highest HIV and syphilis rates are in Manhattan.
* HIV and hepatitis C ran most rampant in gentrifying Bedford-Stuyvesant, Crown Heights, Williamsburg, and Harlem.
* Neighborhoods with the highest rates of chlamydia and gonorrhea include the South Bronx, central Brooklyn, and northern Manhattan.
* Health officials note TB and hepatitis B are most prevalent in the city’s immigrant communities. More than half of Queens’ worst-ranked neighborhoods are home to predominantly foreign-born residents.
Neighborhoods like Chelsea and Morningside Heights have hepatitis rates ten times the city's average. If you live in any of these neighborhoods, wrap it up. Unless you have some burning desire to contract an STD.
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