Ghislaine Maxwell quarantined after jail staff member tests positive for COVID-19

[November 24, 2020] (Reuters) - Ghislaine Maxwell has been quarantined after staff tested positive for coronavirus at the jail where she is awaiting trial on charges she aided late financier Jeffrey Epstein's sexual abuse of girls, U.S. prosecutors said in a letter on Monday.

The staff tested positive last week and Maxwell was checked for the virus on Nov. 18 using a rapid test which was negative, the prosecutors said in a letter to U.S. District Judge Alison Nathan.

Maxwell was placed in quarantine at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn for 14 days, said the letter.

Maxwell has not shown any symptoms of COVID-19 and will be tested again at the end of her two-week quarantine.

The British socialite is allowed to leave her cell three times a day for thirty minutes during which she can make personal phone calls.

Legal calls to her counsel are permitted for three hours a day in a room where she is alone without a jail staff.

Maxwell, 58, has pleaded not guilty to helping Epstein recruit and groom underage girls as young as 14 to engage in illegal sexual acts in the mid-1990s, and not guilty to perjury for having denied involvement in such a scheme when she gave her deposition under oath. Her trial is scheduled for July 2021.

(Reporting by Radhika Anilkumar in Bengaluru; Editing by Michael Perry)

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