Doctors union head: ‘No epidemiological logic’ to weekend lockdowns

The head of the Israeli Association of Public Health Physicians criticizes the government’s expected approval of lockdown measures over weekends as lacking medical sense.

“If a sweeping decision is made on lockdowns during weekends or preventing access to open areas, it has no epidemiological logic,” Hagai Levine, an epidemiologist with the Hadassah School of Public Health, writes on Twitter.

He adds: “I order to maintain public trust and public health decision-making must be conducted transparently, in a planned way, on the basis of epidemiological logic and data and not on the basis of political considerations. There are alternative strategies.”

Also criticizing the proposed weekend lockdowns is Modiin Mayor Haim Bibas, who heads the Federation of Local Authorities.

“The government is losing the public with loss of sense. They want to close summer schools when the morbidity rate in them is only 0.14%!?” he says in a statement. “Someone is deceiving the public and pushing with all strength for the closure of the economy.”

Bibas warns of “total destruction of the economic system that won’t be possible to rehabilitate.”