A Yeshiva University student has been quarantined in his family’s suburban home with symptoms of coronavirus after his father tested positive for the deadly disease, officials said said Tuesday.
The man’s wife and another child, who attends a private Jewish school in Riverdale, are also isolated in the house in New Rochelle but haven’t shown any symptoms, Mayor Bill de Blasio said.
All of the family members are being tested for coronavirus, de Blasio said.
“Obviously, this is a crisis that will be with us, I think it’s fair to say, not for weeks but for months,” de Blasio said during a City Hall news conference.
A short time later, Yeshiva identified the student as a male undergrad and said he hasn’t been on campus since Friday.
The university also said a student at its Cardozo School of Law “is in self-quarantine as instructed by their doctor, as a precaution because of contact with the patient’s law firm” but “is reporting no symptoms.”
“The University is disinfecting all relevant common areas” but hasn’t canceled any classes or functions, it said in a statement posted on its website.
The lawyer’s son lived on campus, Westchester County Executive George Latimer said earlier Tuesday, adding that the lawyer and his wife have two other children in Israel.
The Yeshiva student is suspected of getting the illness from his dad, who on Tuesday became the state’s second confirmed case of coronavirus but the first believed to have been infected through “community contact.”
The father, a 50-year-old lawyer at a small firm in Manhattan, is in serious condition at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center, officials said.
He was transferred there on Monday from Lawrence Hospital in Bronxville, where he was admitted on Friday after falling ill on Feb. 22, said Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, the city’s deputy health commissioner for disease control.
De Blasio said that the father, who traveled to Miami last month, has had “respiratory issues” for the past month and that “this appears to be an example of community spread.”
“We’re very concerned,” he said.
Asked if he would declare a public-health emergency, de Blasio said, “I don’t think at this hour of this day we’re anywhere near an emergency declaration, but obviously things could change.”
