After Israel's Coronavirus cabinet convened Wednesday afternoon to discuss easing additional lockdown restrictions amid decreasing morbidity rates, with an emphasis on reopening schools, national coronavirus commissioner Prof. Ronni Gamzu on Thursday told Army Radio that "some of the classes will be able to open one week after we make the decision in the corona cabinet."
Failing to reach any conclusions, Gamzu said, "We will need to make decisions about the education system on Sunday [Oct. 25]. We have to work hard over the weekend in order to come to a conclusion in the cabinet," he added.
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Gamzu said he prefers a "conservative" approach, recommending capsules starting with first grades and mandatory face masks for all pupils and staff.
His proposal, formulated together with the Health Ministry, was to reopen first to fourth grades in 10 days while ensuring a division between groups during recess and bus rides to school.
A second issue raised by Gamzu and his coronavirus team on Wednesday was increasing fines for violating Health Ministry regulations, as well as tightening authorities' cracking down on events held against the rules.
During the meeting, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called for the Health Ministry's nine-stage plan for lifting the lockdown to be slimmed down to five phases, but health officials expressed concerns about doing so.
Meanwhile, the Health Ministry on Thursday said it recorded 1,089 new coronavirus cases on Wednesday, with just 2.7% of tests returning positive as the country's morbidity rates continued dropping sharply.
The number of active cases hit 19,344 on Thursday morning, after slipping below the 20,000 mark late Wednesday for the first time since July. The number of serious cases dropped to 581, after peaking at 900 on October 4. The last time the number of seriously ill patients was below 600 was on September 18, the first day of the lockdown.
However, the trailing effects of the virus were still taking a toll even as new infections recede. Health Ministry figures showed 231 patients are attached to ventilators.
The death toll has climbed to 2,292 since the start of the pandemic.
An IDF task force said Wednesday that while Israel was continuing to gain control over the outbreak, the morbidity rate remained very high in absolute numbers.
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