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Hundreds of mourners gather in the Brooklyn borough of New York, Tuesday, April 28, 2020, to observe a funeral for Rabbi Chaim Mertz, a Hasidic Orthodox leader whose death was reportedly tied to the coronavirus.(Peter Gerber via AP)
JTA — One year after COVID-19 first walloped Jewish communities in the United States, a scientific study has confirmed something that many in the communities have long believed: gatherings during the week of Purim served as superspreader events.
A paper published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association Network Open, a peer-review journal that is open to the public, concludes that the coronavirus was spreading widely in Orthodox communities across the country last spring around that Jewish holiday — before public health warnings were given about the dangers of large assemblies.