Despite efforts to check the spread of coronavirus, the number of confirmed cases in Israel is doubling every three days. According to current assessments, there are thousands more carriers who have yet to be diagnosed, and the Health Ministry and the nation's hospitals are making preparations to handle the projected spike in hospitalizations.
The first stage of the plan, which is already complete, addresses a scenario of 600 coronavirus patients, with each hospital equipped to take in some 30 patients in dedicated isolation facilities. Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer, which became the first facility in Israel to hospitalize corona patients (Israelis who had been on the Princess Diamond cruise ship), has an isolation facility with 50 beds.
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When the number of confirmed cases in Israel passes 1,000 – an event that is quickly approaching – additional isolation wards will be opened at all hospitals. Instructions to this effect have already been issued. Starting Sunday, all elective procedures are cancelled. Meanwhile, Sheba Medical Center has completed work on an underground facility that can treat 40 patients on ventilators.
In the third stage of the plan, which will be enacted when the number of corona cases reaches 1,400, provides for 420 new beds for light cases to be set up in dedicated facilities: 70 at Shmuel Harofeh Geriatric Hospital in Beer Yaakov, and another 350 at a geriatric center in Rishon Lezion. While patients are already being transferred to Shmuel Harofeh, the transition of the Rishon Lezion facility has been held up by an injunction filed at the request of the families of the elderly residents currently hospitalized there. The injunction was slated to be discussed in the Lod District Court on Sunday.
Should the number of corona cases exceed 1,800, two small hospital facilities will be evacuated to provide another 400 beds.
Meanwhile, surgeries at Israel's private hospitals will be cancelled, and the surgeries scheduled to take place in the nation's public hospitals will be moved there. According to instructions from Dr. Vered Ezra, head of the Medical Directorate in the Health Ministry, if the number of corona cases increases to 2,000 or more, hospitality accommodations attached to medical facilities will be used to provide beds for easy cases.
Meanwhile, the IDF is using its R&R facility in Ashkelon as accommodations for IDF soldiers who contracted coronavirus and are on the mend.
