Gantz, Gamzu praise IDF contact tracing capacity, warn of many undetected cases

Defense Minster Benny Gantz and outgoing coronavirus czar Ronni Gamzu visit a Home Front Command facility where soldiers have begun conducting contact tracing investigations.

Both men praise the Israel Defense Forces’ capacity to cut chains of infection, with both saying Israel’s capacity to do so is now one of the best in the world.

Gantz says the soldiers are able to investigate some 4,000 virus carriers a day to determine whom they were in contact with, far more than the capacity when the investigations were handled by the Health Ministry.

Gamzu, however, adds a note of caution, assessing that the true number of new daily Israeli coronavirus carriers could be ten times more than the number of confirmed cases.

“If there were 600 confirmed [cases] this morning, my assessment is that there are ten times more who don’t get tested even when they have a gut feeling [that they’ve been infected],” he says. “These people endanger not only themselves and their families, but the entire operation to reduce infection… They are keeping us from reopening commerce, grades 5-12 and the entire economy.”