Health Minister Yuli Edelstein, interviewed on Reshet Bet, insisted that the Finance Minister's demand to allow most businesses to reopen is unwise, and noted that the results of the first stage of easing the lockdown will only be known in 12 days' time.
"We're waiting to see the impact of the first stage of the easing of restrictions," he said. "That was only this Sunday, so we have to wait another 12 days for that before we move on to stage two. What I would want to see is more appropriate compensation for businesses that have been harmed by the lockdown, not their hasty reopening."
Edelstein added that, "According to our timetable, we can start reopening elementary classes in another ten days, as long as the data support such a move. There's a difficult debate going on right now, because we don't want to see things reopening only to have to shut them down again. What we must avoid doing is repeating the mistakes we made after the first wave of the virus, when schools resumed studies too swiftly."