More than 100 Israeli schoolchildren were sent into quarantine on Thursday after cases of COVID-19 cropped up in educational facilities in multiple locations less than a week after Israeli schools returned to running at full capacity.
Schools and national day-care facilities were shut down for two months to prevent spread of the coronavirus, and were opened in careful stages as Israel saw a significant drop in the number of new cases, finally admitting students in grades four through 10 on Sunday.
On Thursday, 50 children in northern Tel Aviv entered quarantine after a kindergarten teacher tested positive for COVID-19, while 44 preschoolers and multiple employees at a preschool in Rishon Letzion were quarantined after an assistant at the facility tested positive for the virus.
In former viral hotspot Bnei Brak, students and staff in a special-education kindergarten were sent into quarantine after a teaching assistant was confirmed to have COVID-19.
Testing at a school in Rehovot led to 11 cases being diagnosed, with Health Ministry officials declaring that all students at the location would be checked.
Current health regulations require parents to sign off daily on a form that their children have not had a fever or exhibited other coronavirus symptoms in the past 24 hours. Parents are also forbidden to enter schools, preschools or kindergartens, and must drop off and pick up their children at the entrance.
