COVID-19: Gov’t to meet Thursday on extending lockdown, airport closure

Israel’s land borders are going to close on Thursday morning, the Interior Ministry announced Wednesday. The move is motivated by the attempt to prevent the new highly infectious coronavirus variants to enter the country.

The government is also going to meet on Thursday to discuss extending the lockdown and the closure of the sky, which are due to end on January 31.

While visiting a vaccination center in Sderot with Health Minister Yuli Edelstein, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to prolong both measures to protect Israel from the variants.

“We will decide for how long based on the morbidity rate,” he said.

Earlier in the day, the Health Ministry reported that Israel registered a slight decrease in new daily cases on Tuesday, while the number of serious and ventilated patients remains high.

Some 7,737 new cases of the novel coronavirus were reported, with 9.6% of tests returning positive. Of those infected, 1,141 patients are in serious condition and 311 are on ventilators. The death toll rose to 4,513 since Tuesday morning.

The ministry is pushing for extending the restrictive measures by at least one week to see a more significant reduction in numbers and to relieve the overload on the hospital system.

However, the forces that sit in the government appear deeply divided on the approach to maintain, with Blue and White ministers demanding an increase in law enforcement across the society before agreeing to convene a cabinet to discuss postponing the end of the current restrictions.

“Either everyone is to abide by the lockdown, or there will be no lockdown. Let it be clear to the schemers from the Likud: Blue and White will not give up on the fact that all educational institutions throughout the country will need to be closed. Unlike Netanyahu, we have responsibility. We will not allow irresponsible policies motivated by political interests which cost human lives. The law for Herzliya is also the law for Bnei Brak,” the party’s Twitter account posted on Wednesday morning, as the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee met to discuss a bill proposing an increasing of fines for violating coronavirus measures.

The statement referred to the numerous accidents involving ultra-Orthodox institutions opening in spite of the prohibition.

The Knesset plenum is set to vote on the bill in the second and third reading later in the day. The approval of the law is a condition set by Defense Minister and Blue and White leader Benny Gantz to allow a cabinet to assemble.

Health officials hope that extending the lockdown will buy more time for Israel to reach a higher number of immunized individuals.

The country continues to inoculate about 200,000 people a day. As of Wednesday morning, 2,768,202 Israelis had received the first dose of the coronavirus vaccine and 1,377,803 Israelis had received the second dose.

Israeli authorities had hoped that by now the morbidity in the country would have dropped due to the vaccination campaign.

However, the new variants appeared to have dramatically increased the ability of the virus to infect, as well as the severity of the disease among those infected.

While experts are confident that the vaccine is effective against the British mutation, which is currently prevalent in the country, some are casting doubts about the South African and the Brazilian variants.

“We are troubled by the South African and Brazilian variants. With the Brazilian strain there is a concern that it is resistant to the vaccine and we do not yet have a final result regarding this,” Deputy Director of the Department of Epidemiology at the Health Ministry, Dr. Roy Singer, said during the meeting of the Knesset Committee.