COVID outbreak at Chris Christie’s nephew’s bar mitzvah makes school go virtual

Mendham Township Middle School’s superintendent says less than half a dozen cases were identified from the celebrations

By Ron Kampeas 22 September 2021, 4:39 pm

Edit

Chris Christie speaks at the Concordia Annual Summit in New York City, on September 23, 2019. (Riccardo Savi/Getty Images for Concordia Summit via JTA)

JTA — A middle school in New Jersey went virtual for at least a day to stem a COVID-19 outbreak that followed the bar mitzvah of one of its students — the nephew of former state governor Chris Christie.

The New York Post quoted Mendham Township schools Superintendent Salvatore Constantino, who said that Mendham Township Middle School went virtual on Friday because of an outbreak reported Thursday night.

Constantino said that the school had fewer than half a dozen cases stemming from the bar mitzvah the previous weekend and other existing cases, and predicted the kids would be back in the building on Monday.

Todd Christie, 56, the former governor’s brother, refused to respond to queries from the Post. His wife Andrea Lessner Christie is Jewish. The couple has five children.

Chris Christie, who survived a bout with COVID he believes he caught when he attended a White House event when Donald Trump was president, told the newspaper that his brother had been vaccinated.

Christie, 59, was the governor of New Jersey from 2010-2018. He was among the first of Donald Trump’s rivals in the 2016 Republican presidential primaries to drop out and endorse him.

Christie is now considering a 2024 run and is taking steps to distance himself from Trump, who still controls much of the party.