Laniado Hospital Emergency Medicine Department Director Dr. Amir Shachar, one of the founders of the emergency medicine profession in Israel, explained his doctrine regarding Israel's response to the coronavirus, saying countries that imposed closure did not manage to stop the outbreak any more than countries that did not use this measure.
Shahar spoke with Sivan Cohen and explained why he felt the Swedish method of fighting the virus should be adopted, expressing his opinion on the expected closure: "It's an epidemic but it harms the weak, the sick, and the elderly. The virus does not pose a threat to society."
He went on to comment on the high coronavirus data and corrected: "We only have about 50 new patients in Israel a day, and not 3,000. The health system should be given the means to cope long-term."
The Health Ministry claims 3,904 new coronavirus cases diagnosed in the last day, with the number of active patients this morning standing at 31,769, and with the condition of 474 of them defined as severe and with 133 on ventilator. However, there is a good chance a number of these tests may be inaccurate. Furthermore, 80% or more will be asymptomatic, and a much smaller percentage of those remaining cases will require hospitalization.
A positive polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test does not necessarily mean the virus is present, infectious, or viable, and the PCR test does not detect the whole virus.
Yesterday, 44,717 tests were performed and it seems that as the number of tests increases, the number of cases jumps accordingly.
"Most of the people identified as carriers are not sick, or they are very lightly ill, and I'm trying to say that this figure of 3,000 or 4,000 new patients a day is simply using wrong definitions. There is no disease that is diagnosed by identifying the contagion in the throat. There also need to be symptoms and most of the people identified as positive and get the label 'sick' are not sick."
The interviewer answered Dr. Shachar, "They're carriers..."
"They're not even carriers," answered Dr. Shachar, "They're people who were exposed to the virus. Hundreds of viruses pass our way every day."
A New York Timesarticle entitled Your Coronavirus Test Is Positive. Maybe It Shouldn’t Be, said: "The PCR test amplifies genetic matter from the virus in cycles; the fewer cycles required, the greater the amount of virus, or viral load, in the sample. The greater the viral load, the more likely the patient is to be contagious.
"This number of amplification cycles needed to find the virus, called the cycle threshold, is never included in the results sent to doctors and coronavirus patients, although it could tell them how infectious the patients are.
"In three sets of testing data that include cycle thresholds, compiled by officials in Massachusetts, New York and Nevada, up to 90 percent of people testing positive carried barely any virus, a review by The Times found."
Channel 12 News reported that while Germany uses 30 amplification cycles, Singapore 32, and the United States 34, Israel uses up to a full 37 amplification cycles to detect viral genetic matter.
Many experts agree that anything higher than 30 amplification cycles will result in inactive, dead, or clinically insignificant amounts of the virus being detected, therefore causing the test to show as positive.
Health Communication Lecturer at IDC Herzliya International School Dr. Yaffa Shir Raz wrote: "So what does over 37 rounds mean?
"The inconceivable consequences of this finding are not only on the number of living 'positives' who will surely become negative if they are cultured - but also on the number of deaths classified as coronavirus only because of a positive asymptomatic test. Who knows how many rounds were done there?
"In other words - it means the collapse of the chicken legs on which the entire card tower of the plague in Israel stands," Shir Raz wrote.