Police to crack down on violators of Health Ministry guidelines

The country will be doing more to enforce the Health Ministry’s primary coronavirus regulations as the number of people infected with COVID-19 surges throughout Israel.

At the urgent request of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the head of the National Security Council, Meir Ben-Shabbat, held a meeting to formulate immediate and practical steps for tightening enforcement against the spread of coronavirus. In attendance were top officials, including the health minister and chief of police, as well as the heads of local authorities.

A decision was made to activate the police, local authority inspectors and even population and immigration inspectors – each according to his strengths – to enforce regulations in four areas: wearing masks, congregating in groups that are too large or too close together, complying with the “Purple Ribbon” standard for businesses, and enforcing isolation of patients and people who have come in contact with them.

Local authorities are expected to complete a training program by Monday to prepare their inspectors for the task. The Justice Department is working on completing legislative procedures to empower the inspectors, and the Public Security Ministry has been tasked with taking responsibility for the project.

The meeting piggybacked on remarks made earlier in the day by Health Minister Yuli Edelstein, who said that the government did not yet have intention to “go backwards” and begin reinstating closures. Rather, he said, that strict enforcement of the regulations would be instated.

Edelstein compared violating regulations to breaking traffic laws.

“Anyone who walks around without a mask is like someone who drove at 160 kph... In 2019, 349 people were killed in traffic accidents.”

In the last three months, 299 Israelis have died of coronavirus.

“Only when people make this connection will we be able to dramatically reduce the spread of coronavirus,” Edelstein said.

Some 148 more people were diagnosed with the novel coronavirus in the last 24 hours, bringing the country’s total number of infected people since the start of the crisis to 18,180. There are currently 2,722 active cases – up 115 from the day before.

Among the sick are 31 people with serious symptoms – up two from Monday. Among them are 23 people who are intubated.

The numbers reflect a worsening of the situation in the country, one that Edelstein termed “alarming and dramatic,” on Tuesday during a briefing he held after a visit to Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba.

On May 4, as Netanyahu lifted restrictions, he warned the country that there were three ways in which the easing of restrictions could be halted: should there be 100 new daily cases of infection – excluding individuals arriving from abroad, outbreaks in retirement homes and those living in towns or cities currently defined as outbreak hot spots; should the rate of infections return to doubling itself within 10 days; or should the number of patients in serious condition reach 250.

Not only is Israel seeing more than 100 patients per day for several days running, but the number of infections doubled itself in the last eight days. Infectious disease specialists have warned that there is often a point in the progression of COVID-19 where a patient who is seemingly in stable condition takes a sudden turn for the worse and requires hospitalization. Since many of the active cases in Israel are newly infected, it is still unclear how many of them will become seriously ill.

Tel Aviv has seen the highest number of new patients – 81 in the past three days. This can be compared to its neighboring Bnei Brak, an ultra-Orthodox city that became a focus of infection during the earlier coronavirus peak, which had only 25 cases in the last three days.

While one cause for the spike in cases in Tel Aviv is its large foreign worker population, which lives in cramped conditions and has a lower income level so might be inclined to work even if sick, there are also cases within the general population. Health officials have said this is because many residents are not following guidelines.