Netanyahu threatens renewed lockdown after ‘grave’ forecasts of virus toll
Amid rise in COVID-19 cases, Gantz says response should not be ‘hysterical’; task force report said to recommend that gatherings be limited to outdoors
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Sunday that Israel could be thrust into a new coronavirus lockdown, citing “grave predictions,” a day after a leaked report from a military task force predicted thousands of new cases and hundreds of deaths if authorities don’t take immediate steps to slow the spread of the virus.
A new report by the same Military Intelligence and Health Ministry group leaked Sunday cautioned of high coronavirus infection rates in closed spaces.
Israel has seen the number of new COVID-19 cases continue to climb by nearly 300 a day, leading the Health Ministry on Sunday to instruct hospitals around the country to prepare to reopen their coronavirus wards.
“If we don’t change our behavior on wearing masks and keeping distance, we will bring reimposed lockdowns on ourselves,” Netanyahu said at the outset of the weekly cabinet meeting.
“All the predictions I have been shown are grave. We must flatten the curve now,” the premier said.
Defense Minister Benny Gantz also spoke at the cabinet meeting, saying the response to the spike in infections must not be “hysterical,” because that would “paralyze the economy.”
The Health Ministry said Sunday morning that there were 20,686 total cases since the start of the pandemic, including 4,716 currently active cases. Over 200 people were hospitalized as of Sunday, including 43 patients in serious condition and 28 people on ventilators.
Diagnoses have risen steadily over recent weeks and in recent days have seen numbers hover around 200-300 a day, after being brought down to some 20 cases a day in May following two months of strict restrictions that shuttered business and schools and kept many from being able to travel more than a few hundred feet from home.
Directors of several ministries were set to meet Sunday with members of the National Security Council to discuss steps to curb the renewed outbreak. Channel 12 reported, without citing a source, that the Finance Ministry would use the meeting to push for increased enforcement and fines for people not wearing face masks, as well as concentrated measures against businesses flouting distancing rules, rather than a new lockdown.
The ministry will reportedly also urge improving coronavirus testing.
Despite the increase, the government on Friday gave the go-ahead to hold cultural events of up to 250 people with certain limitations.
The government has repeatedly warned the public to continue to adhere to social distancing and hygiene orders amid concerns that a slacking of attitudes is allowing the spread of the virus to pick up pace anew. Leaders have indicated they are averse to a new national lockdown but will seek local closures on any hotspots that emerge.
On Thursday, the government voted to place partial lockdowns on neighborhoods in two northern Negev Bedouin towns.
Stay outside
A report by the Coronavirus National Information and Knowledge Center Sunday warned that closed spaces have greatly increased risk of infection and recommending limiting major gatherings to outdoor spaces, according to the Kan public broadcaster.
The task force touted increased fines for failing to wear face masks, and recommended placing physical barriers between people in closed areas.
It called for authorities to focus on educating the public of the dangers of gatherings in closed spaces.
The center reports to the government and is run out of the IDF’s Military Intelligence unit but is supposed to work with the Health Ministry,
A previous report by the task force leaked Saturday warned Israel could soon see thousands of new coronavirus infections a day and hundreds of deaths if immediate measures aren’t taken to contain the resurgent pandemic.
However, a top epidemiologist questioned those results amid reports that the Israel Defense Forces and the Health Ministry were both distancing themselves from its alarming forecasts.
Dr. Hagai Levine, chairman of the Israeli Association of Public Health Physicians and an epidemiologist at Hebrew University’s Braun School of Public Health and Community Medicine, censured the report as “unprofessional,” claiming the task force was made up chiefly of army officials and did not include epidemiologists.
“I know the professionals in the Coronavirus Knowledge Center,” he said. “These are intelligence people, not epidemiologists whose job this is.
“It is unprofessional and unserious for epidemiological reports to come out of Military Intelligence without [anyone’s name] being signed on them — certainly no professional from the relevant area.”
According to the Walla news site, both the IDF and Health Ministry were denying having responsibility for the taskforce following the report’s release, with each claiming the other body oversees it.
But Dr. Gili Regev-Yochay, director of Sheba Medical Center’s Infectious Disease Epidemiology Unit, expressed support for the report, telling Channel 12 it was “very accurate and very worrying.”
Regev-Yochay criticized the conduct of both the government and the public as cases rise, saying reopening the country so quickly “may have been a mistake.”
She added: “We can see today where things are headed three weeks from now… we’re not sufficiently prepared.”
And she repeated concerns by other health officials in recent days that while the first wave of the disease had clear hotspots, this was no longer the case with the new infections.
The Times of Israel Community.