The clinics will start next week due to the high burden on MDA • The goal: making the tests accessible to all populations and sectors • "We will significantly increase the number"

As part of the general fight against the spread of the corona virus and as a measure aimed at increasing the number of tests to identify patients in the corona, the HMOs will start starting two dedicated corona testing clinics. The purpose of opening these clinics is therefore designed to make tests accessible to all sectors and populations.

Statement by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Director General of the Ministry of Health // Photo: GPO

Meanwhile, the Maccabi Health Fund has announced that as of Monday next week, dozens of corona testing clinics will open across the country. The clinics will open on April 6 and run Sunday through Friday, with the listed hours of operation posted below.

Dozens of Maccabi health clinics will be temporarily diverted to corona sampling stations, and patients will be referred by family physicians and children on the basis of defined criteria and will be scheduled for the appointment.

As we know, only MDA has so far been responsible for conducting the corona tests in Israel, but due to the high demand for tests and the large load on MDA, the HMOs will begin to carry out the entire testing process themselves: sampling using flippers, sampling at Maccabi Central Laboratory And reporting the results to the HMO patients.

Maccabi Hospital fund CEO Ren Sa'ar said of the move, "We will significantly increase the number of tests. Maccabi members can easily be tested near their home. Our team is working very hard and are now taking on a new and complex task. The tests performed will allow better monitoring of the disease and thus we can focus efforts of the entire health system. The MDA team is doing everything possible and we are now multipliers and together we will reach thousands more. "

The CEO of Leumi Health Fund, Mr. Nissim Alon, also welcomed the anticipated move and commented that "From the beginning, I said that what works great in a routine will work very well in an emergency. What does not exist routinely and in an emergency location in a hurry will work but with many glitches, as is unfortunately the case these days, because the division of responsibilities today is between the MDA that takes the samples and transfers them to 27 different laboratories that do not talk between them, and which produce results sent to the Ministry of Health I asked and pressed that the entire process of Corona testing be carried out with full responsibility of the end-to-end HMOs, and I am happy and congratulate the Ministry of Health on the planned change. We regularly conduct 10 million laboratory tests a year, so we are sure we can handle the best corona tests. And with great efficiency, we will continue to work in full cooperation with Mashar D. Health, MDA and his excellent paramedics who do a very good job of sampling and carrying out the tests. "