Coronavirus in New York: Rabbi Tests Positive in New Rochelle

The rabbi, Reuven Fink, also teaches two classes at Yeshiva University, and his students there had been asked to isolate themselves, the school’s president said in a statement early Friday.

Public health officials had ordered the synagogue to halt services and many of its congregants to isolate themselves after learning that a lawyer who lives in New Rochelle and tested positive — the state’s second confirmed case — had attended services there last month.

As of Thursday, New York state had confirmed 22 cases of the new coronavirus, officials said. Eighteen of them were in Westchester County, and state officials said that all of those were connected in some way to the lawyer.

Noam Bramson, the mayor of New Rochelle, said that he expected more cases would be reported there.

“It’s a moving target,” he said.

Bramson said that New Rochelle’s downtown had been quieter than usual, but that residents were not ostracizing members of Young Israel. Instead, he said, they were checking on those who were quarantined and bringing food to those who needed it.

Fink, the rabbi at Young Israel of New Rochelle, was in self-quarantine before testing positive for the virus, he said in his email to synagogue members.

“I have the virus and am doing reasonably well,” he wrote. “But I must caution all of you who have had personal contact with me to seek counsel from your health practitioner as to how to proceed.”

Earlier in the week, officials in New York and New Jersey ordered any people who attended religious services, a bat mitzvah and a funeral at Young Israel of New Rochelle to self-quarantine.

So far, two people in New Jersey, both from suburban Bergen County, have tested positive for the coronavirus: a 32-year-old man with an apartment in Fort Lee and a woman in her 30s. Both were in stable condition.

Late Thursday, the principal of the Frisch School in Paramus, New Jersey, also in Bergen County, told parents and faculty members via email that 28 students were under self-quarantine for possible exposure to the virus.

The principal, Rabbi Eli Ciner, said in the email that the students in question had attended the bat mitzvah or services at Young Israel of New Rochelle.

One of the students had begun to show symptoms of the virus and was being tested, Ciner said. He also said the school would be closed until Tuesday so its building could be thoroughly cleaned.

Rabbi Fink teaches his two Yeshiva University classes to undergraduates at the school’s campus in Washington Heights in Manhattan, according to the statement from the university’s president, Ari Berman.

The Westchester lawyer’s son, who tested positive for the virus, is also a student at Yeshiva, and is now in quarantine at home with his family. The school had previously canceled classes until March 10 as a precaution.

Berman said that Yeshiva University had contacted the rabbi’s students and recommended they self-quarantine until further notice.

A group of people who had come in contact with the Westchester man and later attended the annual conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in Washington this week have also been asked by health officials to self-quarantine.

More than 2,770 people in New York City are currently in home isolation, according to the City Department of Health, which said it was monitoring the cases.

Most of the people in isolation are in self-quarantine and recently returned from the five countries where the outbreak has been most severe: China, Italy, Iran, South Korea and Japan. At least two New York City residents, a health care worker who had tested positive after visiting Iran and her husband, who tested negative, are under mandatory quarantine in their Manhattan home.

Two other New York City patients, a man in his 40s and a woman in her 80s, were hospitalized after testing positive for the virus, officials said Thursday.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times .