The Corona Cabinet will decide in the next day on the list of cities that will be subject to restrictions - starting tomorrow morning • Prof. Blitzer: "A short closure is the worst of all worlds"
Closed on Elad
Photo:
Jonathan Saul
The State of Israel is preparing for closure.
The Committee of Ministers will today (Sunday) approve the list of red cities on which restrictions will be imposed.
The local authorities, as well as the police and army forces, are preparing in recent days for the decision, which will take effect tomorrow.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the end of the Corona Cabinet // Photo: Roi Avraham, GPO
Interior Minister Aryeh Deri referred last night in the weekend news to the imposition of the partial closure and said that the required solution is the imposition of a general closure.
He said: "It is impossible to evade the truth: in order to get out of these numbers - we will have to enter a general closure."
On the other hand, the head of the corona commissioner's expert team, Prof. Gamzo, Prof. Ran Blitzer, expressed his opposition to a general closure and tweeted on his Twitter account: "A short closure is the worst of all worlds."
Red light
The Elad municipality, which is ten percent above the red line, still hopes that no closure will be imposed on the city.
For several months now, the city has been running a joint UAV for the Home Front Command and the municipality, where they know about each patient and are in personal contact with him.
The Bnei Brak municipality raised the threshold for tests in the city this week to 10,000, and said it took care of evacuating hundreds of patients to hotels outside the city and tightening enforcement on debtors in isolation.
The municipality claims that "Bnei Brak's determined war in Corona has made it a role model for other authorities and government ministries, so this is a slap in the face that is actually threatened and punished again and again and serves as a scapegoat."
In Kafr Qassem, where there are already hundreds of verified patients, they are already in an extensive media campaign and also hope to avoid closure.
The director of the emergency department, Kald Issa, believes that most of the infections are from weddings, which have recently been significantly reduced.
"We are prepared with teams of volunteers to provide food to the residents, a medical center and an ambulance, but if a closure is decided - we are prepared. People here want to reduce the level of morbidity," Issa said.
The city of Tira is also preparing to close.
According to Dr. Walid Nasser, the deputy mayor, they are beginning to understand the meaning of a general closure and are advertising the welfare department's phones in the city. The entire municipality is in a state of emergency and running a help center for residents. At the castle, Dr. Nasser believes that most of the infections came from the celebrations.
Waiting for a decision
Tiberias is not yet on the list of red cities on which it has been decided to impose a closure, but after the hearing held over the weekend, the city leadership expressed opposition to the outline of the restrictions presented to it.
Even so, a fatal blow.
In its explanatory memorandum, the municipality stated that with its declaration as a red city, it has expanded the Municipal Corona Squadron, in which the Home Front Command and the police are also involved. This week, the municipality will send five of its employees for training for the purpose of establishing a system of municipal epidemiological investigations.
Following the hearing held for it last weekend, the head of the committee called, Moni Matuk, announced that the municipality was rejecting the outline of the restrictions.
Instead, the municipality proposed declaring areas where most patients are concentrated as a restricted compound.
The Jerusalem municipality also stated that they are still waiting for the decision of the Ministerial Committee.
According to Shosh Sha Laban, chairman of the community administration in the Jewish Quarter: "Residents are angry about the planned closure because there are 16 patients in our neighborhood out of about 4,000 residents.
We should not be red.
If there had been serious enforcement, we would not have reached this point. "
Beware of orange
The city of Ashdod is on the border of a red authority, with a score of 7.26 out of 10 and is 0.24 points away from being a red city.
Morbidity data in quarters were not published in the last week, but it is known that the number of active patients stands at 1,018 when in the last week alone 572 new patients were diagnosed out of 5,307 tests performed.
In Ashdod, they also decided to perform a corona test without the need for a referral from a doctor and free of charge, which is intended to expose as many corona patients as possible and stop the infections.
In addition, due to the alarming increase in the number of patients in Ashkelon, and its transformation into an orange city, and as part of the authority's efforts to cut the contagion chain, Mayor Tomer Glam ordered the construction of a corona testing complex for the general public starting this morning.
Prof. Gamzo: "We took the complicated road, it is not always popular" // Photo: GPO
In an urgent meeting convened by the mayor over the weekend with the principals of the complexes, he sought to increase enforcement and take hard action to implement the guidelines of the Ministry of Health.
As a result, city inspectors have been authorized to enforce masks.
Meanwhile, Tel Aviv-Yafo is defined as a yellow city, mainly because of neighborhoods in the southern part of the city and in Jaffa, where there is a high concentration of patients and an outbreak of epidemics.
The municipality has established an urban police force with the participation of the Home Front Command and the Israel Police.
Ready for enforcement
Police are prepared to enforce the closures in cities and localities to be determined.
Enforcement will be carried out on the ground and from the air through police, soldiers and inspectors of the authorities.
Following the increase in the number of infected, the commissioner, Deputy Superintendent Moti Cohen, instructed the police volunteers to increase the effort in outreach activities, and also instructed the police forces to increase the supervision and enforcement activities in the matter of maintaining the guidelines.
Unique police stations and task forces will be deployed in large localities divided into quarters for the purpose of carrying out surveillance, prevention, enforcement and response missions.
Supervision will also be stepped up around supermarkets in order to ensure compliance with the regulations.
In addition, traffic police officers will be deployed on major arteries and will assist in blocking access to localities.
At the same time, talks are taking place with the heads of the ultra-Orthodox sector in an attempt to prevent unnecessary friction, especially with extremist factions that do not obey instructions, including the Jerusalem ultra-Orthodox faction.
Discussions and talks are also taking place with the heads of the Arab sector in order to help enforce the closure and outreach activities.
The IDF will assist the Israeli police in enforcement, similar to the assistance provided in the first wave. Starting tomorrow morning, about 500 soldiers will return to the city streets who will join the police squads. Enforcing the closure, enforcing business closures and banning traffic at night.
The Home Front Command is also preparing to increase the rate of corona tests this week, and to concentrate on cutting the contagion chains by the designated headquarters established in the IDF, the Alon headquarters. Those aged 70 and over have no family background and other needy populations, and the army is preparing to increase the activities of the command's information system, although at this stage it is still limited.
Itzik Saban, Lilach Shoval, Avi Cohen, Adi Hashmonai, Yuri Yalon, Daniel Roth-Avnery and Gadi Golan participated in the preparation of the article.