Amid the rather alarming rise in cases of COVID-19 ahead of the start of the school year, officials from the Ministry of Health told the Knesset Constitution Committee that if the number of patients continues to rise in the coming days, there will be a reassessment regarding the start of the school year.
Professor Nadav Davidovitch, Director of the School of Public Health at Ben Gurion University of the Negev and a member of the team advising the Coronavirus Cabinet, responded to the comments in an interview with Radio 103FM on Thursday.
"We need to learn how to live with COVID-19, that means taking actions and not being passive. I am in favor of opening the school year on time, we are taking risks but we have a much better envelope than there was before. Nothing will completely stop the disease, but it will not be possible keep the schools closed all year round," he said.
"We need local leadership and the backing of the Ministry of Health. The plan right now is very correct - a combination of serological tests in places where there is more than 12 percent presence of morbidity, distribution of antigen test kits and as much immunization as possible, people need to understand that they are responsible as well," continued Davidovitch, adding, "A sick child should not be sent to school regardless of COVID-19. If anyone thinks that we can force everyone to get vaccinated and get tested, they are wrong. The parent cannot be forced to test his children."
At the conclusion of the interview, Prof. Davidovitch stressed, "COVID-19 will not go away, and shutting everything down is the simplest solution. We have proposed a lot of things, the pace of implementation of all of them in the State of Israel is slow. The place where we are today is much better in terms of general PCR tests, also in terms of rapid tests, and home tests are less reliable but if they turn out positive their reliability is high. I do not see anything changing on October 1, and I do not think we will have to close all schools if there is an increase in morbidity."