Why is Israel going into near lockdown?

The novel coronavirus that has spread across the world, infecting more than 175,000 people, has hit the Jewish state too. But according to the Health Ministry, around 300 Israelis have COVID-19, and no one has died. So why is the government shutting the country down?

According to experts in public policy and health, the severity of the measures being taken now is because the country has let its medical system deteriorate for decades, and now it is unprepared.

“Before the outbreak of the current pandemic, hospital occupancy rates in Israel were already the highest in the developed world, while its mortality

rates from infectious diseases, which doubled in the past two decades alone, are not only higher than in every other developed country, they are 73% higher than the second-ranked country,” said Prof. Dan Ben-David, president and founder of the Shoresh Institution for Socioeconomic Research and a faculty member at Tel Aviv University’s Department of Public Policy. “We shut the country down to deal with something that we neglected for decades.”

Almost every aspect of the country’s crippled medical system can be understood as the coronavirus crisis unfolds.

With high occupancy rates in hospitals – some are over 100% all year and sometimes during flu season they top 200%, according to Ben-David – then people are treated in the corridors and dining halls under unclean conditions.

“It’s like a petri dish,” he said. “So there is no wonder that people die at such fast rates from infectious disease. Fifteen times more people die from infectious