Experts who spoke with "Israel Today" suggest transferring powers to the local government, gradually opening up the economy and strengthening the vaccination policy • "The government's desire to control the moves simply failed," says Prof. Ronit Calderon-Margalit. Prof. Davidovich
Checkpoints in Jerusalem
Photography:
Oren Ben Hakon
The government will convene tomorrow (Wednesday) to discuss the continuation of the closure.
The rate of morbidity in the country remains relatively high even after a long closure, and the coefficients of infection do not decrease enough.
So what is left for the government to decide on the issue?
With this question we turned to public health experts while presenting six options: 1. Continuation of the existing closure.
2. Eradication of the plague similar to the New Zealand model.
3. Opening the economy based on vaccines.
4. Rated opening.
5. Back to the traffic light program.
6. Division of Israel into Green Islands.
The government must change overall direction
"It will not be possible to impose a zero percent infection closure in Israel because Israel does not have the ability to enforce even the current closure," says Professor Ronit Calderon-Margalit, from the Hebrew University School of Public Health in Jerusalem.
"It must be said that otherwise the ministers will waste time. The traffic light program at the moment, despite all its wisdom, has never been implemented in the country."
"On the other hand, it is clear that the economy cannot be opened now, there are too many patients and there is too much contagion. Against this background, it seems that the central government is at a crossroads where it must delegate powers and responsibilities to local government. "By logic similar to the traffic light logic, but while enforcing the violations," she added.
"That way it will be possible to open the education system in open spaces and wide areas, and decide what opens and what does not. The government's desire to control moves simply failed. Beyond that, the government has to start on its own and take the public sector out of almost 100 percent. "The work in the public sector to 50 percent. Without the participation of the municipal sector and without thinking outside the box, the situation will not change," she states.
Get out of quarantine while maintaining distance
"The closure in Israel has exhausted itself even if it made sense in the first place," says Prof. Erna Tal, deputy director of Shamir Medical Center. "Therefore, we need to get out of quarantine while maintaining the rules of distance and enforcing them. That is, letting people gather up to ten people, shopping in stores according to rules, and so on."
"In addition, the vaccination policy needs to be strengthened. There is a halt in the rate of immunization in Israel, and in my opinion it is because the public has partly lost faith in vaccines or the system. We need to go public and convince the public." "And also keep all the rules of the purple character. However, everything possible should be enforced."
Gradual opening of the economy
"The economy should be gradually opened up, starting with kindergartens and from there moving forward," says Prof. Nadav Davidovich, head of the Ben-Gurion University School of Public Health and a member of the government advisory team. In the ultra-Orthodox and Arab sectors.
A multi-layered protection process should be produced with all the rules of exclusion and precaution and with the entire set of tests for amputating and intensifying the rate of testing in the various areas and amputating the adhesion chains.
"In other words, we need to internalize the Israeli public that the virus is here and we will not reach zero infection, and act to stop and constantly reduce its progress while opening the economy carefully."