Lawrence yeshiva builds hospital to treat Covid-19 patients

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Being proactive instead of reactive to the quickly spreading Covid-19 pandemic, Yeshiva Sh’or Yoshuv, an Orthodox Jewish school in Lawrence, is creating an ad hoc hospital in its CedarLawn Avenue building.

Originally, the proposed health care facility at the yeshiva produced an uproar of negative comments on Facebook after a couple of stories about the planned hospital appeared and then disappeared online, now it seems the ad hoc hospital could gain approval as it is said it’s working in conjunction with the Northwell Health system.

The Five Towns, especially Lawrence and Woodmere, have been hard hit as cases numbers continue to rise because of the increase in testing and that a good portion of the Jewish community was slow to stop gathering in large groups as the state mandated social distancing guidelines went into effect. To date, Woodmere has 256 cases of coronavirus and Lawrence 102, by far the highest totals in the Five Towns.

The facility is expected to treat patients with relatively mild cases of Covid-19 to ease the burden of area hospitals as the virus is anticipated to peak later in April.

While most of the comments on Facebook were not positive and written before when more information became available, Kalmen Barkin thought of the potential upside. “I think if they play their cards right they can actually look very good in the news,” he said. “Local community builds emergency hospital to care for its people.”   

As of press time, approvals have yet to be attained, officials said.

A call placed to the school on Friday for comment was not returned.