The Israel Defense Forces is significantly broadening its involvement in the national effort to combat the spread of the coronavirus in Israel.
IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Aviv Kochavi had made the fight against the COVID epidemic in Israel a top-priority mission, IDF spokesperson Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus told reporters last week.
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"We will allocate all of the efforts needed to battle against COVID-19," said Conricus.
The IDF Medical Corps has begun setting up two underground COVID-19 wards at the Rambam Medical Center in Haifa to reinforce the existing wards. Once these wards begin treating patients, it will be the first time the IDF has provided medical treatment to Israeli civilians in Israel, Conricus said.
The decision to set up the wards came after preparation by IDF Deputy Chief of General Staff, Maj. Gen. Eyal Zamir and Health Ministry Director-General Professor Hezi Levy.
"Our combat, intelligence, cyber, air force and other units defending the borders are fully operational," Conrius assured the media.
While the IDF frequently conducts rescue and medical missions overseas, treating sick Israeli civilians is a first, and the wards will be exclusively staffed by IDF medical personnel under the guidance of the hospital's civilian staff. The wards will have the capacity to provide treatment for several dozen patients.
"This is very different from basic trauma and emergency medicine," said Conricus, describing former IDF missions to disaster scenes oversees, such as earthquakes and mudslides.
Treating COVID-19 patients "is a highly cumbersome and delicate process," he said, requiring layers of protective gear and special procedures. "We are approaching this with a lot of humility, and we are learning."
The IDF expects to have the wards up and running in two to four weeks, and is recruiting medical personnel from across the IDF, including special forces and combat units.
Conricus said that "redeploying" medical personnel to the COVID front would influence the military's ability to provide routine care for soldiers, a risk the IDF was "knowingly" taking in order to support the home front.. At the same time, he stressed, routine security operations would not be affected.
The multitude of security threats facing Israel has not vanished, emphasized Conricus. Tensions remain especially high with Hezbollah in Lebanon. The IDF's "ability to deal with them has not been affected. All of our combat, intelligence, cyber, air force and other units defending the borders are fully operational. There is no effect on our operational capability. Having said that, we are definitely taking the spread of the virus very seriously," the spokesman told reporters.
Last Thursday, Zamir led a special brainstorming session that focused on two questions: How can the IDF be more effective in what it is already doing, and what can it do in the future to assist the national effort to bring the pandemic under control?
The IDF's Alon taskforce, whose mission is to coordinate all IDF support for the national civilian effort, is up and running under the Home Front Command, Conricus told JNS.
The Alon taskforce oversees the newly-established Ela contact-tracing unit. The unit is currently training personnel ahead of launching full-scale operations to stop outbreaks. Ela will use computerized questionnaires and share data online, a technological leap forward from the pen-and-paper work civilian contact tracers have been conducting.
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Because its people still have to be trained, it will take some time before the unit is fully operationa, explained Conricus, who added that the Health Ministry was overseeing the process.
Ela will be a battalion-sized unit with some 600 to 700 personnel, with each investigator conducting multiple contract tracing inquiries every 24-hour period.
The unit is based near the Home Front Command headquarters in Ramle.
According to media reports, when the unit is up and running at full steam it will be able to conduct 5,000 daily contract tracing investigations at once, with the country processing 100,000 COVID tests a day.
The IDF is also operating approximately 30 quarantine hotels for civilians with mild cases who cannot quarantine themselves at home.
Meanwhile, over 1,000 IDF soldiers have tested positive for the virus. As of Thursday, they were all in mild condition.
"They are recovering in various locations, most of them at home, and some at recovery facilities in Ashkelon and an additional facility that we just opened," Conricus said.
In addition to all these measures, an IDF DNA lab, originally designated to be used to identify the remains of fallen soldiers, has been converted into a COVID-19 testing lab to help take some of the burden off civilian labs. The facility can currently process some 1,000 tests per day, but that capacity is expected to increase.
Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.
