Health Minister Yuli Edelstein spoke to Israeli media station Reshet Bet on Tuesday and said that should Israel continue on its current trend of increase in morbidity rate that it is currently undergoing, then another lockdown is looming and is expected to begin next week.

“We will be forced to shut down retail and trade,” Edelstein said, “given the coronavirus statistics we’re seeing right now.” He noted that, “The government already decided on very clear criteria regarding reimposition of restrictions. We said that when we reach 2,500 new cases per day, with an R-rate of 1.32, that’s when it happens. We’re not far off that now.”

Should those target numbers be reached, the Health Ministry is expected to recommend that the commercial sector be once again shut down for a period of five weeks. Earlier, it was reported that any upcoming restrictions would last only 3 weeks.

As of now, the new restrictions will leave the education system open in green and yellow areas, thus the Ministry feels that the restrictions that are put in place will need to last for a longer period of time in order to create the desired drop in the morbidity rate.

According to sources within the Health Ministry, as reported on various media outlets, at the end of the five-week period, some performance spaces and shopping malls may be allowed to reopen if all attendees present a document proving they have either recovered from COVID-19 or been vaccinated against it.

Edelstein also took a moment to encourage the public to receive the vaccination against Covid-19 that is currently being brought into Israel. “I will most probably be vaccinated on Saturday night. I won’t ask any member of the general public to do something that I am not personally prepared to do – that’s an elementary principle for any public servant. To date, there are no preexisting health conditions that have been officially listed as reasons for any person to refrain from being vaccinated.”