The Education and Health ministries have decided to close down the Israeli education system through Passover, Israeli media reported Thursday. The decision comes as the coronavirus spreads across Israel, reaching 104 patients.
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According to Channel 13, the decision was already presented to the prime minister, who accepted it. A formal announcement is expected Thursday evening and will contain the details of the closure. Earlier in the day, the Education Ministry held a preparatory meeting on the subject, in which they discussed the possibility of moving to distance learning programs so that students could stay at home.
“There are more and more questions,” said Shmuel Abuav, director general of the Ministry of Education on Thursday. “As coronavirus turns into a mini-pandemic, it will require a lot of energy to disinfect schools and keep students, teachers and staff safe.” He said that schools are “non-sterile” and that the Ministry of Health was pushing for school closure.
In addition, on Thursday, the Teachers Union of Israel has sent a letter to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu requesting that he close down Israel’s educational institutions and move students to distant learning.
“Israel is one of the most crowded countries in the world,” wrote chairwoman Yaffa Ben-David in a letter. She noted that Italy, Sweden, Denmark and Poland have all closed their schools, which has reduced the number of coronavirus cases in those countries.
“Schools and kindergartens are incubators of infectious diseases,” Ben-David wrote, “posing a serious and immediate danger to students, teachers and their family members – especially those with poor immune systems or pre-existing conditions.
“We will not be able to stop the spread of the virus across the country once it infects entire schools,” she continued.
Ben-David accused the Education Ministry of putting the economy over the health and well-being of teachers.
“I ask you to order the closure of all educational institutions in Israel,” Ben-David concluded. Over the Purim holiday, the Jerusalem Municipality prepared for classes to resume by placing additional soap and antibacterial hand gel stations in local schools. They also scheduled educational sessions for students to learn better personal hygiene. The Bedouin school system already on Thursday morning sent out a message informing its population that high school students would be studying from home via virtual learning sessions. The message said that students would gather at a regular time – like a regular class – each in front of a computer or smartphone. The students would be presented with the materials and be able to ask questions. Anyone who cannot afford the technology would be able to complete their coursework when the quarantine is lifted.
On Wednesday evening, the prime minister rolled out a series of new restrictions, including that there should be no events with more than 100 people held in the country. However, he and Health Ministry director-general Moshe Bar Siman Tov noted that they did not see a need to close schools at this time.
On Thursday, the Education Ministry reported that 85% of students showed up for school as usual, after the three-day Purim holiday. Also on Thursday, multiple universities across the country announced that they would not be starting classes as planned on Sunday. Rather, Hebrew University, for example, sent out a notice that in light of the coronavirus crisis, the school “will delay the opening of spring semester by one week to prepare for remote-learning options. … All classes will be taught online only, and students will tune in via remote-learning options, such as Zoom.” The school said that the libraries, research labs and administrative offices would remain open, as usual. “Hebrew University remains in close contact with Israel’s Health Ministry,” the school said in a statement, “and will continue to provide students, faculty members and administration with up-to-date information, as warranted.” Further restrictions on the public are expected to be presented soon. Interior Minister Arye Deri said he will convene a meeting on Sunday with all local and regional councils to discuss the spread of coronavirus and how the country’s local authorities will be able to continue providing necessary services. At Sunday’s meeting, the officials are expected to discuss issues of municipal taxation, staffing when employees are in quarantine and other challenges.
Currently, there are 34,474 Israelis in home quarantine, the Health Ministry announced. Three Israelis have already recovered from the virus.
The following are highlights of recently diagnosed people and how they contracted the virus, which were released on Thursday by the Health Ministry: >Patient No. 83 is in her 40s from central Israel.
>Patients Nos. 84, 85 and 86 are in their 30s and 40s and recently returned to Israel from a trip in Germany. They arrived back in the country on March 12 and have been in isolation since then.
>Patients Nos. 87 and 88 are children, a 10-year-old boy and an 11-year-old girl. They are the offspring of patient No. 42. The boy had been with his father in Spain, returning to the country on February 26.
> Patients Nos. 89 and 90 are two women in their 60s from central Israel. They recently traveled to Moscow and from Moscow to New York and back. >Patient No. 91 is in her 30s. She returned to Israel from a vacation in Denmark on March 8. >Patients No. 92 and No. 98 are tourists in their 20s. They arrived in Israel from Moscow on March 3. >Patient No. 93 is in his 40s from central Israel. He returned to the country from a vacation in Germany on March 6 and has been in isolation ever since.
On Thursday morning, the director-general of the Health Ministry, Moshe Bar Siman Tov, told Army Radio that he expects that in the near future, dozens of Israelis will be diagnosed with the virus per day, if not more.
Over the last week, the ministry has been rolling out new restrictions on Israelis to help stop the spread of the potentially lethal virus. On Wednesday evening, the ministry said that public gatherings could no longer have more than 100 people, which they clarified on Thursday applies to weddings, bar and bat mitzvahs and funerals in open and closed areas.
Bar Siman Tov advised that Israelis to “change your lifestyle to deal with an external threat” and reminded them that it is the elderly and those with pre-existing conditions that are most at risk for becoming fatally ill from COVID-19.
Earlier in the week, the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that all people entering Israel from abroad would be required to adhere to 14 days of home-quarantine. Foreigners who cannot prove they have a place to stay will be refused entry.
Health Minister Ya’acov Litzman has compared Israel to Switzerland, which has a similar population, to show how well the country is doing at curtailing the spread of the virus. On Wednesday evening, the southern Swiss canton of Ticino declared a state of emergency over the coronavirus. According to local media, approximately 130 people have been confirmed to be carrying the virus in the canton, 11 are in the intensive care unit and one person has died.
As of March 11, there were 650 cases of coronavirus in Switzerland, more than 1,000 in the United States and about 130,000 worldwide.
The World Health Organization declared the novel coronavirus a pandemic.
“We have made this assessment for two main reasons: first, because of the speed and scale of transmission,” WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Thursday. “Almost 125,000 cases have now been reported to WHO, from 118 countries and territories. In the past two weeks, the number of cases reported outside China has increased almost 13-fold, and the number of affected countries has almost tripled.
“The second reason is that despite our frequent warnings, we are deeply concerned that some countries are not approaching this threat with the level of political commitment needed to control it,” he continued. “We have to double down.”
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