Israel - More cases among the Orthodox, in Jerusalem and Bnei Brak

The data released today by the ministry of health on the geographical distribution of coronavirus cases in Israel confirm that the infection is prevalent among the Orthodox population that has so far not respected the government's health directives. A problem denounced by Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu who, just yesterday giving news of the new measures, explicitly mentioned groups in this sector (together with lay people and Arabs) towards which the police will intensify the actions. According to these data, in the general classification, in first place there is Jerusalem - with a strong Orthodox presence - which adds 650 positives. In second place Bnei Brak - an almost entirely Orthodox town near Tel Aviv - with 571 cases. In third position the secular Tel Aviv spaced 278 positive. The numbers are eloquent but everything becomes even more evident if they are compared - as the ministry did - with the inhabitants of the various places. Bnei Brak therefore has 287 patients per 100 thousand residents, Jerusalem 70 and Tel Aviv 64. So much so that the residents of the orthodox predominantly small towns of Bnei Brak, Modiin Illit and Elad (all close to Tel Aviv) have been sorted, according to media reports, from the emergency room of the local Sheba hospital in isolated areas to avoid any form of infection. Not all the Orthodox world reacted in the same way to the directives: for the most part they obeyed the restrictions endorsed mostly by the chief rabbis of Israel, while some fringes of irreducible zealots (hostile in principle to the secular state and science) have instead denied the problem even coming to clash with law enforcement.