New York – At least one New York City hospital is denying charges that it is purposely underreporting the number of cases in which infants are contracting herpes during the rite of metzitzah b’peh.

The Jewish Daily FORWARD (http://bit.ly/XYdFUZ) is reporting that a representative from Maimonides Hospital in Brooklyn strongly denied the charges brought about by Rabbi Hershel Schachter, rosh yeshiva at Yeshiva University’s Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary.

Rabbi Schachter, whose daughter works as a nurse at New York Presbyterian, issued the allegations at a lecture in London in February 2013.

In his comments, Schachter charged that three local area hospitals; New York Presbyterian, Columbia University Medical Center, and Maimonides Hospital were all complicit in the practice of underreporting cases out fear that they would lose business.