Fourteen Israelis were diagnosed with the coronavirus on Sunday and 11 on Sunday, raising the number of diagnosed cases in Israel to 50.
Most of the patients recently returned from European countries and others have been in contact with people subsequently diagnosed with the virus.
Also, Israel’s Foreign Ministry announced on Monday that an employee of the Israeli embassy in Athens has been diagnosed with the coronavirus and has infected two family members.
The employee was on the same flight from Tel Aviv to Athens as the group of Greek tourists who visited Israel and the Palestinian Authority and were diagnosed with the virus upon arriving home in Greece.
The bus driver for the Greek tourists, a 38-year-old East Jerusalem Arab, contracted the coronavirus and is currently in critical condition with acute pneumonia.
Israel’s Transportation Ministry issued new rules for public transportation on Monday, intended to protect bus drivers from contracting the virus as well as protect passengers from contracting the virus from each other. A letter sent by the Director of the National Transportation Authority delineated the rules for bus drivers, including banning passengers from sitting in close proximity to the bus driver. The first row of seats on each bus will be blocked by tape to ensure that a buffer remains between the passengers and the driver.
The ministry is preparing for the possibility of a shortage of bus drivers due to the likely possibility that a percentage of drivers will contract the virus from the public and has an emergency plan in place to reduce bus service by up to 25%.
Also, bus passengers will not be permitted to stand on intercity buses – an instruction intended to minimize crowding on extended bus rides, and standing will be discouraged on intracity buses as well. If passengers do stand, they cannot stand near the driver adjacent to the first row. Bus drivers have also been instructed to leave the bus windows open as much as possible.
Israelis returning from Egypt were instructed on Monday by the Health Ministry to self-quarantine for two weeks due to rising cases of the virus there. The instructions apply retroactively to anyone who returned to Israel from Egypt in the past 14 days.
The number of cases in the coronavirus in the Palestinian Authority rose to 25 on Monday, one in Tulkarem and 24 in Bethlehem. After the first cases of the virus were diagnosed on Thursday the Angel Hotel in Bethlehem, PA President Mahmoud Abbas declared a state of emergency and closed all schools, and religious and tourism sites. The streets of Bethlehem, normally teeming with tourists, are completely empty.
משבר הקורונה:בית לחם הפכה לעיר רפאים הבוקר שישי אחרי הכרזת הרשות הפלסטינית על מצב חירום למשך חודש בגלל וירוס הקורונה pic.twitter.com/Adfvjogki6
— sami abdulhamid سامي عبد الحميد (@samiaah10) March 6, 2020
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu held a videoconference call on Monday with seven European leaders to encourage improved regional coordination in mitigating the spread of the coronavirus.
Health Minister Yaakov Litzman, National Security Advisor Meir Ben Shabbat, Health Ministry director-general Moshe Bar Siman-Tov and Foreign Ministry director-general Yuval Rotem also participated in the conference.
ראש הממשלה קיים ועידה דיגיטלית עם מנהיגי האזור סביב הקורונה – צפוhttps://t.co/MEgy57QUut
— עכשיו 14 (@Now14Israel) March 9, 2020
The European leaders who participated in the conference were Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenković, Romanian Prime Minister Ludovic Orban, Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borissov and Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades.
Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan (Likud) stated on Sunday that he may declare a state of emergency in Israel due to the spread of the coronavirus.
“I’m going to consider the need to announce a ‘civilian state of emergency,’ which will give authorities much broader powers,” Erdan said.
Erdan also announced on Sunday that he ordered the Israel Prisons Service to halt visits to security prisoners in Israeli prisons by Palestinians from Yehudah and Shomron due to the outbreak of the virus in the PA, adding that this step was essential in avoiding the spread of the virus in Israeli prisons.
(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)
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One Response
Of course there has been no word about extra buses being added to pick up the slack. On Purim, those intercity buses operating out of the chareidi centers usually have more people standing than sitting. Are they tripling the bus schedule?
Also, the packed intracity buses are now going to be even more compressed as the same amount of people will hve less space to crowd into. Very nice for the drivers, but how about the public? So much for public transportation…