Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday that a new inspection protocol would be enforced to make sure businesses and schools were complying with social distancing requirements as no fewer than between 10,000 and 16,000 students and teachers in India are being quarantine 2 weeks after schools were reopened.
According to a report by Financial Times, children returned to schools in a staggered reopening about two weeks ago, after Israel’s new coronavirus infections hovered below 50 cases a day for several weeks.
At least 220 students and teachers were confirmed to have been infected in the past few days, including more than 150 from a single school in an upscale Jerusalem neighbourhood.
The outbreak, as reported by Financial Times has pushed new infections to almost 100 cases a day for the first time since early May, close to the threshold at which health officials have indicated some lockdown restrictions would be reimposed.
Another report has it that the number of pupils and staff in home quarantine grew from slightly more than 16,000 to almost 17,500 in little more than 12 hours.
Most of the new cases, as reported are from Jerusalem, particularly from one high school, the Hebrew Gymnasium, where, as of today, 148 pupils and staff have tested positive.
The deputy head of the country health ministry, Itamar Grotto, had told a parliamentary committee, “If we get 100 sick people in a day that are not connected to the same outbreak epicentre, we’ll need to step back, restrictions-wise.
“For now there is one outbreak centre, we have a plan to contain it that does not involve the whole population”.
The government has responded by saying it will shut down any school with a single confirmed case.
This is stricter than the earlier requirement of waiting until three cases were confirmed before a school would have to be closed, which had affected fewer than a dozen schools since the lockdown was lifted.
Israel’s experiment with returning children to schools has been closely watched abroad as the country took the lead in opening up its economy after a relatively mild trajectory of fewer than 20,000 cases and under 300 deaths.
No more than 30 people are currently on respirators. An epidemiological study released last Tuesday indicated that about 200,000 Israelis, under 3 per cent of the population, had developed post-infection antibodies, far below the 60 per cent required for so-called “herd immunity”.
While Israelis are required to wear masks in public or in indoor situations where social distancing is not practical, the regulation is not being regularly enforced.
Restaurants are offering outdoor seating and most offices and factories have reopened.
Israelis have flocked to beaches, parks and outdoor concerts by the thousands as the country largely appeared to have escaped the brunt of the pandemic after a gruelling shutdown that left nearly a third of the population unemployed.