In his final press conference as Israel's coronavirus chief on Thursday, Professor Ronni Gamzu warned his successor, Professor Nachman Ash, a former IDF surgeon general, of some of the challenges of the role.
"We must not allow vital medical needs to be compromised by politicking. What we need is a leadership that doesn't just reproach the people but addresses them as equals," Gamzu said. "The coronavirus coordinator has not been granted sufficient powers, and probably won't be."
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In his parting speech at the handover ceremony, Gamzu, who was appointed in July, defended the performance of his signature "traffic light" system of determining public health restrictions for local authorities based on number of new coronavirus cases and percentage of positive test results.
Ash, 59, is a member of the Department of Health Systems Management at Ariel University and until recently served as head of Maccabi Healthcare Services Division of Medicine. He has also served as surgeon general of the IDF.
Meanwhile, Israel has shortened the mandatory quarantine period for those exposed to the coronavirus or who have returned from overseas from 14 to 12 days. As part of the new plan, individuals who are in quarantine need to register with the Health Ministry and take a COVID-19 test upon entering quarantine. The quarantined individual will then need to take an additional test 10 days from the date of their last exposure or since returning from abroad. Should both tests come back negative, the individual will receive confirmation of their results.
In a meeting of the so-called "coronavirus cabinet," Thursday, Netanyahu came out in support of Interior Minister Aryeh Deri's call for the quarantine period to be further shortened to seven days.
"People are not cooperating with the epidemiological investigations in order to avoid getting their friends quarantined," the prime minister explained.
Health Ministry figures show that Israel has thus far recorded a total of 322,463 cases of the virus since the outbreak of the pandemic. There are currently 8,059 active cases, with 303 in serious condition, 133 of whom are on ventilators. So far, 2,707 Israelis have died from the virus.
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