Health Ministry denies Israel will quarantine American tourists
Jewish man diagnosed with coronavirus in NYC as three Jewish day schools temporarily close • El Al may lay off 1,000 workers
The Health Ministry denied claims by one of its consultants that Israel is considering quarantining visitors from the United States.
“It is not currently on the agenda,” a spokesperson for the ministry told The Jerusalem Post.
His statements came after a consultant with the ministry told KAN radio Tuesday that the country is considering putting all American citizens who travel to Israel under 14-day quarantine.
In the interview, Dr. Tal Brosh, head of the infectious disease unit at Assuta Ashdod and member of a Health Ministry committee that evaluates the coronavirus threat, said that such a quarantine is “under discussion, of course” among officials.
He also said: “I would recommend it, but let’s complete the discussions first.”
Brosh said that despite the
United States being a large and very organized country, the coronavirus is spreading rapidly there, including several severe cases and even deaths.
So far, six people have died from the novel coronavirus in Washington state and at least 100 people across the country have been diagnosed with it.
America announced this week that up to a million people could be tested for the virus by the end of the week.
“We know that there are places that have more people who are carrying the virus than they really know,” Brosh said. “This is not just in the United States, but [also in] other places.”
Hours after he made his statements, three Jewish day schools in the New York City area announced they were closing at least for the day after a second case of the virus was confirmed in the city, this time in someone who had contact with one of the schools – SAR Academy and High School in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, Westchester Day School and Westchester Torah Academy.
“We are writing to inform you that there is a suspected case of coronavirus in our community,” SAR Academy wrote in an email signed by its principal, Rabbi Binyamin Krauss. “We are in touch with the New York City Department of Health and are following their guidelines.”
The co-educational school,
which describes itself as “modern Orthodox,” informed parents that as of Tuesday, the closure was only for “precautionary” reasons and that parents should “remain calm.”
Governor Andrew Cuomo said at a news conference on Tuesday that a man who works in Manhattan and lives in the New York suburb of New Rochelle, which is near the schools, tested positive for the novel coronavirus. He added that the 50-year-old man had an underlying respiratory illness and is hospitalized, and that the patient had not traveled to countries considered to be major locations of the outbreak, but had recently visited Miami.
Two of the man’s sons are currently under home quarantine. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said in a press conference Tuesday that one of the sons attends SAR Academy but has no symptoms. De Blasio added that the second son attends a local university and does have symptoms. Yeshiva University announced on Tuesday that one of the man’s sons is an undergraduate student there, and that another student at its Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law has quarantined himself.
The previous day, New York state confirmed that a 39-year-old woman who had traveled to Iran tested positive for coronavirus. She is currently in home quarantine.
Last week, Cuomo discussed New York’s preparations for the coronavirus during a news conference at the state capitol. He said the city was racing to keep pace with the rapidly evolving public health response to the virus. He noted that some US colleges had begun restricting or suspending study-abroad programs in countries such as Italy and South Korea, and that K-12 schools were also considering appropriate measures to help prevent the virus from spreading among students.
Seven people have died so far from the novel coronavirus in Washington state and at least 100 people across the country have been diagnosed with it. The US announced this week that up to a million people could be tested for the virus by the end of the week.
In Israel, there are so far 12 people who have contracted the coronavirus and more than 5,000 Israelis are under quarantine.
ON TUESDAY morning, El Al canceled some flights to Cyprus after a decline in demand since the coronavirus outbreak began.
In light of the cancellations, Israel’s national airline announced further easing of its commercial policy regarding flights to Thailand and Japan, such as allowing customers to change departure days and the canceling of handling fees.
In addition, EL AL announced that customers whose flights were canceled will be offered alternatives to minimize major changes to their schedules.
The decision to ease its commercial policy comes amid thousands of inquiries from customers and travelers.
“As a result of special circumstances due to the coronavirus situation, including instructions and recommendations made by the Health Ministry to the public, we have been forced to make commercial adjustments on certain flights,” the airline said. “In this context, we are offering alternatives for travel on other flights. We apologize to our customers for the inconvenience.”
Several flights to European destinations were canceled on Monday, after El Al cited the need for “commercial adjustments, due to decline in demand.”
Cyprus currently has no confirmed cases of the coronavirus, but flights to the country are also being canceled due to a lack of demand.
Passengers scheduled to fly on flights to destinations such as Vienna, Budapest, Brussels and Frankfurt were among those affected by the cancellations.
The carrier has already canceled all flights to China, Hong Kong and Italy. The scheduled launch of a nonstop route to Tokyo on March 11 has also been postponed.
In an initial move to cut costs on Sunday, El Al fired 50 trainee pilots as well as an additional 14 pilots waiting to begin their training at the company. Then on Tuesday, senior management and directors of the airline agreed to take an immediate wage cut of 20%.
The wage cut, which will be applied retroactively to earnings from March 1, was confirmed by a source to The Jerusalem Post. There was no official response by the airline.
Last week, El Al said that it expects revenues to drop by $50 million to $70m. between January and April as a result of the outbreak, resulting from declining demand and wide-ranging travel restrictions imposed by the Health Ministry. Executives are currently preparing a plan to lay off up to a thousand of the company’s 6,300 permanent and temporary staff.
LOCAL HOSPITALS are also being forced to make adjustments due to the virus.
The Rambam Hospital in Haifa finished preparations ahead of the opening of a new coronavirus department on Tuesday. The facility will be on its own floor, isolated from the rest of the hospital.
Construction and logistic teams worked in the past week to cut an entire floor of the hospital in two: a hospitalization wing on one side and rooms for the team on the other side. The department will also have a separate ambulance entrance and elevator. Air from the rooms will be pumped through a filter before it exits the building.
The new department will be able to hold 30 patients, with two rooms that will be able to treat children and an additional room for patients who have been intubated due to acute respiratory failure.
A special coronavirus team was trained by Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer, which opened its own coronavirus unit last month.
The department will be staffed by 30 nurses who all volunteered for the job, as well as doctors from a range of different departments. The team will be specialized for this department and until further notice will not work in any other department.
Patients will have phones and video equipment in their rooms in order to talk with family and medical professionals, with the aim of minimizing contact between patients and other people.
Rambam said in a release that a new remote monitoring system will be used for the first time in Israel in this new department. The system, developed by the Israeli start-up Biobeat, includes smart monitoring stickers that will replace the currently used monitoring methods. The stickers will be put on all the patients and will allow continuous monitoring of breathing, saturation, pulse, blood pressure, body temperature and other essential metrics. The results will be continually streamed to an information system, allowing the monitoring of every patient without the need for physical contact.
“The establishment of the specialized department for the intake of coronavirus patients presents us with many challenges, some of which we learned for the first time. Some of them we’re creating from scratch, because the experience throughout the world regarding everything connected to the coronavirus is limited,” said Dr. Michael Halbertal.
“There is impressive volunteering and I am sure that we can stand before the mission to provide quality medical care to the citizens of Israel who may find themselves sick with the coronavirus. This is part of our mission as medical professionals.”
The Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention reported the lowest single-day figure on Tuesday – 1,866 new cases of coronavirus – leaving Chinese health officials optimistic that the number of new COVID-19 cases has tentatively stabilized.
The fatality rate for the disease is around 2%, which is lower than that of the related Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) but higher than the rate of 0.1% for seasonal flu.
Reuters contributed to this report.