The eruption of the corona wave with the return to the education of Israeli children was expected.
Anyone who has been in the country in recent months and listened to experts could know that once the children return to the system - there will be verified students and classes will go into isolation, if there are no significant means of exclusion.
It goes without saying that there will be sick children and the result is self-evident.
However, despite the feeling of loss of control and widespread outbreak, I believe that the situation is not bad and Israel is actually doing the right thing when it comes to long-term dealing with the corona virus.
The current situation has two sides: on the one hand, 150,000 children in isolation at home, who are not studying - and this puts a burden on them and their parents.
Of course, this is not a small number of students.
On the other hand, the rest of the system - more than 2 million students - conducts their studies as usual.
Students learn, there is stability and teachers teach.
That is, despite the difficulty parents experience for sick children, there is an advantage in this situation where most of the system functions in parallel with the epidemic.
Of course, there is an epidemic outside, there is a virus, but we need to maintain our daily routine as much as possible, and here the other option was to disrupt the studies of all students in Israel - which is worse.
After all, the choice is between disabling all students in Israel and disabling some of the students - and in this respect, when considering the possibilities, it is clear that the children had to be returned to school on September 1.
However, it is clear that the current situation is not good enough and that the "green classroom" program, which we at Sheba, at Safra Children's Hospital, have long recommended, should be implemented in the education system. In this program only the sick child is isolated and the other children study, even in the same grade in which the same child was identified. Beyond that, this child recovers after his isolation period and gets a "green mark" - and so the pool of people who are immune to the virus is constantly increasing, without burdening the isolations of classrooms and teachers on the system. If we act in this way, then the number of isolated children will be reduced to a few thousand, instead of the 150,000 children who are currently isolated, and thus the load will be further reduced.
As far as the green class project is concerned, pilots are currently being conducted in the ultra-Orthodox and Arab sectors, but I believe that we are delaying too much, and that this project should be launched immediately upon returning to school after Sukkot.
The Ministry of Education and the government need to put a lot of pressure on the Ministry of Health to approve this pilot and not drag its feet - the natural tendency in Israel in relation to many things.
It is not possible to be in pilots all the time, but you have to start moving the system according to the regular class plan.
This is the right way to activate the education system and return to the routine of us all.
Brought to publication: Assaf Golan