May 24, 2020 was a pivotal moment in Israel's fight against the coronavirus: On that day Israel began to lose its grip over the pandemic, undoing the major gains that were generated by the lockdown several weeks earlier.
On that day, the number of daily infections began to shoot up after weeks of being on a downward trend.
On May 23, only 5 new cases were reported, and then on May 24, the figure shot up to 13. A day after that the number was 22, and then two days later it was already at 50 new daily cases. By the end of the month, the figure was greater than 100.
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In order to understand how Israel got to that point, it is worth revisiting the cabinet decision from April 19, just after the Passover holiday, when the government announced the lifting of the lockdown measures.
This resulted in the reopening of the economy, as well as schools, synagogues, and shops. On May 15, wedding halls were also reopened, as well as other entertainment venues, although to a limited scale.
The government, which was encouraged by the low infection rates based on the daily new cases, decided there was no risk in doing so. In fact, two governments made that decision: the transition government that had been in place since the Knesset was dispersed prior to the April 2019 election, and the new government formed in 2020, following the March election.
As economists say, there was no way of knowing in real-time that May 24 was the inflection point. If you look at a snapshot of time, you can't discern a trend.
Everyone was happy at the time, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu even told Israelis they could cautiously return to normalcy. "Have a blast," he said on live television.
Because a new government had just been sworn in, the ministers were not fully up to date on the various coronavirus data.
While most Likud ministers backed up the prime minister, the other major party, Blue and White, remained suspicious of his motives and was convinced that he was tailoring the coronavirus response to fit his political needs.
When Netanyahu later asked Blue and White to support reimposing the lockdown measures, Blue and White would reject the proposal. This resulted in an inconsistent strategy.
Hence the first failure.
Alongside the political events that undermined the coronavirus response, there was also the legal drama. On April 30, about a week after the key lockdown measures had been lifted, the High Court of Justice ruled that the government was no longer allowed to use the Shin Bet security agency for contact tracing using cellphone data unless the transition government fast tracks primary legislation.
But the transition government lacked a majority in the Knesset, and even after a new government had been formed, that majority could not be mustered because Blue and White was unwilling to support the use of cellular data to track people. Even in late June, when the daily infection rate stood at 342, the leaders of the party refused.
Hence, precisely when the coronavirus pandemic reared its head and the cases shot up – May 24 – the government ceased using the tool to trace patients and contain the disease.
This was the second failure. Ending the cellular-based contact tracing put Israel into a tailspin. The coronavirus response turned into a plane flying without GPS navigation or a radar. Health officials could no longer get real-time data on possible exposure of Israelis and there was no way of conducting proper epidemiological surveys. This was the third failure.
Moreover, upon the swearing-in of a new government, the top officials at the Health Ministry were replaced, including the minister and director general. No one there was aware of the urgent need to expand the tracing capacity ten times over.
As if that was not enough, even after it was clear a second wave was unfolding, the government did not take steps to counter it and even allowed the event halls to increase the number of attendees to 250. This turned weddings and parties into superspreader events, owing to the fact that social distancing measures were not followed.
The data clearly shows that two weeks after the wedding began operating at almost full capacity, the case numbers shot up to almost 500 a day.
This was the fourth point of failure. Rather than take immediate steps to stop the pandemic in its tracks, the government allowed large events to continue.
By the start of July, when the number of daily cases was already passed 1,000, the government finally fast-tracked legislation that allowed contact tracing using cellular data.
But by this point, the ship had already sailed and there was no way to reverse the scope of the pandemic because there was no way of tracing the contagion of some 90% of the new patients. The government had lost control over the situation.
At the end of the day, a mixture of a lot of political wheeling and dealing and complacency, with a pinch of judicial activism and a transition between governments led Israel's infection rate to be, as one senior Health Ministry official said, "one of the worst in the world."
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