Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is set to convene a meeting at his office in Jerusalem on Saturday afternoon to discuss further, more stringent measures Israel may take to halt the coronavirus pandemic.
Netanyahu will meet with the relevant authorities, including from the health and finance ministries, at 4:00 p.m. after which he will likely make a statement later in the day announcing any new directives, according to Hebrew media reports.
The stricter measures could include transitioning staff at workplaces deemed non-essential to work from home, further limiting public gatherings and movement and shutting down malls and other places, and possibly shuttering kindergartens and private daycares in addition to the schools and universities which were ordered closed for at least the next month.
A senior minister told the Ynet news site that, currently, “the inclination is a slowdown of the economy, not a shutdown.”
Officials were said to be working to determine how many Israeli workers would be classified as non-essential, according to Ynet.
The Health Ministry is pushing for a complete shutdown, according to the report, and Netanyahu will have to decide on the next course of action.
According to an unsourced report (in Hebrew) by news channel N12, the Health Ministry is looking to include a directive where no more than two people would be in a room together to limit contact, as well as a complete suspension of the public transport system and the education system. READ MORE