Israelis need to be cautious, Cyrille Cohen, the head of the immunotherapy laboratory at Bar-Ilan University told The Jerusalem Post, as the number of children and educational staff who entered isolation reached into the dozens.
“It is hard to say if we are seeing the beginning of a second wave” of the novel coronavirus, he said, “but we have to be cautious. The numbers are very low, but the numbers were very low when we started this pandemic.”
He warned that if Israel starts to see infection rates spike in “school after school, it will be a second wave. People can behave like everything is OK, but it does not mean that COVID-19 has disappeared. We should not be alarmed, but we should be alert.
Cohen made his comments on the same day that a particularly high number of students and teachers across Israel entered isolation after a number of educational faculty and staff were diagnosed with the novel coronavirus.
In the haredi (ultra-Orthodox) city of Bnei Brak an unidentified number of children and staff were asked to home-quarantine after a teacher’s aide at a special education school was diagnosed with SARS-CoV-2. In addition, a preschool was closed in Rishon Lezion after an assistant teacher was found sick, putting 20 children into home-quarantine.
At first, some 50 children from a kindergarten in North Tel Aviv were asked to quarantine after a staff member tested positive. However, several hours later, the Health Ministry reported that the staffer received a false positive and the children could resume their normal routines.
At the same time, 30 people – 27 residents and three employees – of a rehabilitation facility in Rehovot were isolated after a staff member was found to have the virus.
Last week, a teacher at a school in Rehovot who had been in contact with 52 students and many staff members tested positive for corona. The school was shut down until May 27. On Thursday, the Health Ministry reported that it had done widespread testing at the institution and so far, eight people have tested positive – three teachers and one teacher’s family members, as well as two students and two of their family members.
Professor Sigal Sadetsky, head of Public Health Services, said that the Health Ministry was aware it could see an increase in infection when schools officially opened in full this Sunday, and that her team is “monitoring the state of infection among students and staff.”
But former Health Ministry director-general Prof. Gabriel Barbash, told the Post that Israel “may have acted too hastily in opening the total system.” He said that while “we will know only in a few days – since the incubation period for the novel coronavirus is between five and 14 days – he believes the school system is likely going to have to return to a capsule-based system.
“It was essential to open schools,” Hadassah CEO Zev Rotstein told the Post, explaining that children need a framework, it is the country’s duty to teach them and parents have to go back to work. But he said that if not monitored, schools are ripe for “super-spreaders,” individuals who spread the disease to many people at once.
“One teacher in front of a class that comes in contact with other adults and pupils, and if no specific care is being taken it may develop,” Rotstein explained. “The teacher will infect many kids who in turn will of course cause infection of their own families, and so on and so forth.”
He equated the situation that the Health Ministry has created in schools to a similar situation that erupted in senior living facilities during the height of the pandemic. Around one-third of all coronavirus deaths in Israel were residents of these facilities, which could have been avoided, he said, but the super-spreaders were not tested before coming in contact with the older people they cared for.
“In nursing homes, it was not the tenants, but those coming in and out to treat and nourish them,” he said.
There are two ways to stop the spread of coronavirus and the first is screening. He recommended routinely testing teachers and school staff for coronavirus – even as often as once a week. The other he said, is by maintaining good hygiene and requiring that students stay two meters apart.
The country has reduced the number of people tested per day to around 20% to 40% of what it was testing only a few weeks ago. Moreover, Health Ministry director-general Moshe Bar Siman Tov had touted a new serological testing program that was supposed to roll out at the latest this week, but which has not started.
Serological tests show that people have had an immune response to the infection.
Earlier this week, Ran Sa’ar, CEO of Maccabi Healthcare Service, told the Post that the testing was delayed for “logistics,” which the Post confirmed with a source close to the ministry.
“There are several methodological issues that have not been solved,” the senior medical professional said. “There are lots of issues they are arguing about,” he added, noting that in the meantime, nobody is getting tested.
Cohen explained that without serological testing, Israel has no data on how much of the population is immune.
“If we will have more serological testing, we will be able to say, ‘I do see a rise in cases, but on the other hand, I know we have 20% or 30% of the population already immune to the virus so I am less alarmed because we are starting to see some herd immunity.”
Rostein said that the Health Ministry is being “stingy” using the tool of screening.
“There is no reason for this,” he stated, noting that even after the entire country was forced into lockdown the ministry has barely changed its methodology of testing those who have symptoms and are already in quarantine as opposed to screening asymptomatic people, who are more likely to silently spread coronavirus.
If the testing situation is not rectified, Cohen said, the impact on the economy could be even more severe than the first time around.
Each week the education system remains closed costs the economy around $739 million, the Bank of Israel reported. On Thursday, the Health Ministry reported 2,680 Israelis were infected with coronavirus, including 36 on ventilators. Some 279 people have died.
Neighborhoods in two Israeli cities – Rehovot and Ramle – have been designated “red zones” of high infection by the Health Ministry this week. It was first reported that Rosh Ha’ayin was also a red zone, but the ministry later retracted the statement, cautioning that “there have been cases of morbidity diagnosed in the city during the past week and therefore the rules of hygiene, including wearing masks and keeping distance, should be strictly adhered to. Anyone who is not feeling well should consult a doctor at his or her health fund.”
Despite these spikes, Health Minister Yuli Edelstein approved gatherings of up to 50 people in indoor settings on Thursday. Fifty people could already gather in open spaces.
Cohen said that this is the “instant generation” and people want to be done with COVID-19 as quickly as it started. But he said that with pandemics “it can take weeks, months and even years.
“I would not be surprised if next year we are still talking about COVID-19,” he said. “This is not going to disappear.”
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