Two hundred South Korean citizens who have arrived in Israel over the last 24 hours will be quarantined at a military base to prevent a possible spread of the coronavirus disease, the Ynet news agency reported on Sunday.

Earlier in the day, Israeli Interior Minister Aryeh Deri ordered to ban all non-citizens who have visited either South Korea or Japan within two weeks from entering the country. Last week, a similar ban was introduced against people coming from Thailand, Macao, Hong Kong and Singapore. In early February, Israel suspended air traffic with China and banned people from China from entering the country.

Such measures were introduced after a group of Catholic tourists from South Korea visited Israel last week only to discover upon coming home that it had people infected with the novel coronavirus all along.

The Israeli authorities said on Saturday that anyone who contact the group had to self-quarantine for 14 days.

Meanwhile, Israeli Ambassador to China Zvi Heifetz has been quarantined in Beijing as he traveled on the same plane that the South Korean group took to fly from Israel, South China Morning Post newspaper reported, citing the Israeli Foreign Ministry.

At the same time, South Korea announced the highest level of epidemiological threat as the number of Covid-2019 cases in the country spiked today, reaching 602.

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