The Ministry of Health has eliminated the isolation of most people who call the center with complaints about mistakes • Waiting times will be about 2 minutes within a week • Hundreds of epidemiological researchers will be recruited
In a discussion held today (Tuesday) in the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, chaired by MK Zvi Hauser, we discussed the activities of the Awareness Center operated by the Ministry of Health, the entry instructions for isolation sent to citizens in light of the use of GSS tools, and the many complaints of citizens. During the hearing, a representative of the Ministry of Health claimed that the ministry had abolished the isolation obligation for more than half of those who contacted the center with a complaint about errors.
Director General of the Ministry of Health in a message to the public: "Going to the gym - danger" // Photo: Yoni Rickner
Ayelet Greenbaum, director of the service department at the Ministry of Health and in charge of all the centers, told committee members that in the first week, 70,949 messages were sent about close contact with a Corona patient, and said that about a third of those who received the message contacted the centers and asked for an appointment. About 12,000 of the applicants, more than half of all applicants to the center, were released under the authority of the first center. About 20 percent of applicants were rejected outright at the first call center, and about 12 percent were referred to the second line call center. In this center, too, there were objections that were rejected, and there were also about 700 applicants who were also released from solitary confinement.
In addition, Greenbaum added that in the first week of its operation, the mechanism collapsed and did not function properly, but since last Wednesday there has been a steady improvement trend. The person first calls the "Voice of Health" center, which is called the first-line center, and representatives of this center were given powers to release a person from immediate isolation in some cases, or to reject the application outright. Cases that require more lengthy clarification and examination, or unusual treatment, are referred to a second-line hotline, which is the center of objections, which handles inquiries according to professional priority - for example, medical teams receive an earlier response due to their importance in fighting the virus.
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Later, Greenbaum said that she currently has 350 call centers, some of them employees of the Ministry of Health and some of them soldiers from the Home Front Command, and the call center is staffed 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and at any given moment there are 150 active call centers. Today the waiting times are about 15 minutes for her, and the average handling time for an application is about 6.5 minutes. When asked by the committee members about the goals for the center's activities, Greenbaum replied that the goal she set was to answer 80% of the calls within two minutes of waiting, and to that end she was training more callers, and within a week she would reach 300 callers at any given moment.
At the same time, this discussion also included requests for a quick discussion on the subject of "errors in entering isolation due to GSS identifications" initiated by MKs Orna Barbibai, Israel Eichler, Hiba Yizbak and Hemed Amar.
As part of the law authorizing the GSS to assist the Ministry of Health in epidemiological investigations, the Ministry of Health must establish a mechanism to which a person who has received a notice instructing him to enter solitary confinement can request a re-examination of the data and explain why he does not think he should enter solitary confinement. Reply to this achievement as soon as possible - within no more than three days. The law further defines the duty of the GSS and the Ministry of Health to report to the committee on the implementation of the law, and the discussion today was based on the Ministry of Health's first week of activity.
MK Barbibai Mish Atid, who is in solitary confinement, participated in the discussion using zoom and said: "I asked for a quick hearing in light of the lack of response to civilian appeals against GSS personnel. In the sin, he created a lack of motivation to develop the civilian app and increase the set of investigations, and ended up with about 70,000 citizens who went into solitary confinement and had no answer, or who would check and investigate whether they were committed to further isolation and loss of work days. To prepare for the future and give the citizen a proper answer. "
MK Eichler of Torah Judaism, who was one of the Knesset members at whose request the debate convened, said: "These days, civil rights elections are being violated much more severely than the intrusion into telephones. These are the closures that are imposed on entire cities and neighborhoods because the state has no other solution. But also on the subject of spellings, there is the issue of those who cannot receive text messages, and therefore call them. "These are voice messages, in which they are told to enter the isolation, without the end date of the isolation and without a telephone number that can be returned to ask questions and appeal."