Coronavirus: Gov’t expected to pass two-week total lockdown

The government is meeting Tuesday afternoon to determine next steps for stopping the colossal spread of the coronavirus across Israel. The ministers are reviewing a plan by the Health Ministry that would require the country to lockdown almost completely for two weeks.Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Health Minister Yuli Edelstein have been pushing for such a move. It appeared that Alternative Prime Minister Benny Gantz would not accept such a proposal. However, at the start of the Tuesday meeting Gantz seemed to have changed his mind and said he would support such a plan – closing down for two weeks, including the school system. Earlier in the day, Edelstein said that hundreds more will die, thousands more will be in serious condition and tens of thousands more will be infected with coronavirus if the country does not shut down.Edelstein met with a team of health officials ahead of the government meeting and against the backdrop of surging infection.On Tuesday morning, the Health Ministry reported 8,311 new cases were diagnosed the day before – 7.4% of those screened tested positive. Some 837 people are in serious condition, including 187 who are intubated. The death toll is also on the rise: 3,448 have succumbed to COVID-19 in Israel. According to Dr. Sharon Alroy-Preis, head of Public Health Services, the reproduction rate (R) stands at 1.27 and is higher than one in 95% of cities across Israel. She said 65% of the country is “red” and that “even if we shut down today, the numbers will continue to rise.” She told reporters that the real numbers are outpacing even the worst predictions made by the Health Ministry.

“We want to build a bridge between today, between the current rate of infection and the success of vaccines,” Edelstein said at the briefing. “We can only build this bridge on one condition: a complete closure.“Friends, you need to understand well what the price is of doing nothing today: hundreds of dead, thousands in serious condition and tens of thousands sick.”He said that the government voted in favor of a strict lockdown when there were 2,900 new cases per day. Today, with more than 8,000, the government has yet to rule.Edelstein called on ministers to stay away from making populist decisions and instead to put health at the forefront. He asked the public to do the same.“There is a possibility of getting out of this,” he said, “if we all remember that in this country there is still solidarity… If people think, ‘What is my personal responsibility?’”A full lockdown would mean reducing the number of people who can go to work at businesses that do not welcome the public from 50% to 30%, and reducing public transportation. It would also mean closing down all schools.Gantz was originally against allowing all schools to close. However, Gantz met with Coronavirus Commissioner Prof. Nachman Ash on Tuesday and with Netanyahu and it appears that during those two meetings he changed direction. Gantz does plan to insist that all haredi schools are closed during the lockdown; the government has not managed to enforce the closure among that sector thus far. Edelstein during the briefing said that “the closure will be a closure and there will be no exceptions. People need to understand this, and we need to work together.”
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