JERUSALEM (JTA) — More than half of a group of 114 students who returned to Israel from a yeshiva near the Chabad world headquarters in New York have tested positive for coronavirus.
The Hasidic students returned after the headquarters at 770 Eastern Parkway in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn was closed for the first time ever.
They were placed in quarantine after they arrived in Israel last week at the Dan Hotel in Jerusalem, which has been repurposed for quarantining citizens who have been exposed to coronavirus. The students who tested positive have been hospitalized in central Israel.
The Health Ministry is working to locate the 200 people aboard the flight who have been exposed to the virus and place them in quarantine.
There had been concerns at the outset of the flight since Crown Heights was the site of a large outbreak of coronavirus. The students told the Israeli media that they had been asked to sign an affidavit that they were not experiencing signs of illness and to the best of their knowledge had not come into contact with someone sick with coronavirus.
More than 1,200 Israelis have been diagnosed with coronavirus.
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