The Health Ministry on Saturday said nine South Koreans tested positive for the coronavirus after a recent visit to Israel.
The Koreans were in Israel from February 8-15 and were confirmed to have the virus upon their return to South Korea, according to a statement from the ministry.
The ministry called on anyone who was in close contact with the Koreans to report this and self-quarantine for 14 days from the date of their last interaction.
It also posted a list of places the group visited, among them Netanya, Caesaria, Nazareth, the Sea of Galilee, the Dead Sea, Beersheba, Jerusalem and the West Bank city of Hebron.
The statement from the ministry came shortly after a BBC reporter in Seoul said seven South Koreans from a tour group of 77 organized by the Catholic Church tested positive for the virus upon their return home.
“We’re trying to clarify if someone from the local churches was in contact with them [the South Koreans],” Wadih Abu Al-Nasr, the Vatican’s spokesman in Israel, told Channel 13 news.
“I’m hoping they weren’t infected in Israel. I wish them a speedy recovery and hope and pray that none of our people here were infected by this problematic virus,” he added.
The Israel Nature and Parks Authority confirmed the group visited the national parks Tel Beersheva, Masada and Caesaria.
“Instructions were given to employees at the sites who were in contact [with the South Koreans],” it said in a statement.
The report comes a day after Israel reported its first case of the novel COVID-19 virus, an Israeli woman who returned to the country after being quarantined on a cruise ship off Japan that saw a large number of infections.
South Korea on Saturday reported an eight-fold jump in viral infections in four days to 433, most of them linked to a church and a hospital in and around the country’s fourth-largest city, where health workers scrambled to screen more than 9,000 worshipers. READ MORE