Israel's public school system will be completely back on track within a month, barring negative developments in the rate of new COVID cases, coronavirus coordinator Professor Nachman Ash said Monday.
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For the first time since the pandemic hit Israel in early 2020, government authorities have rolled out a detailed plan to fully reinstate in-school study for children in all grades.
The first stage of the plan, slated for implementation in approximately 10 days, will cancel the requirement for pods in grades 4-6 if it turns out that eliminating pods for 3rd graders does not cause a spike in morbidity.
Pods will also be cancelled for middle schools, but only at institutions at which 75% of the students' parents agree to allow their children to be tested for COVID weekly.
The Health Ministry is also considering more flexibility to the conditions for cancelling the pod requirement for 11th and 12th-grade students and will eliminate pods in classes where at least 65% of the students have been vaccinated, rather than the minimum 90% previously stipulated.
The last stage of the plan is expected to launch in three to four weeks, if in-school COVID testing shows low morbidity among middle schoolers (7th-9th grade students), pods will be cancelled for these grades, as well, without the students having to undergo testing.
"We understand the need to reopen the school system and understand that the morbidity situation has changed, but on the other hand, we are doing this very responsibly," Ash said.
"I expect that it will take three to four weeks to examine what happens with the tests. If most of them are clean, I think we'll expand the school reopenings, and believe that a month from now the school system will be operating as usual," he added.
Meanwhile, the Health Ministry is expected to discuss next week a recommendation to eradicate the mask mandate in open spaces, after a meeting of COVID experts determined that there was little risk of contracting the virus outside.
In a related development, the Health Ministry on Monday said that despite reports of a vaccine shortage, Israel had received another 380,000 doses of the Moderna vaccine, in addition to the 170,000 doses that were delivered this past weekend, Israel Hayom learned.
By the end of 2021, Israel is expected to receive 3 million more doses of the Moderna vaccine, in addition to the 110,000 doses that Israel has already administered to Palestinians working in Israel.
As of Tuesday morning, there were 5,042 active or symptomatic COVID-19 patients in Israel, a drop of 65 since midnight between Monday and Tuesday. Of those patients, 319 were in serious condition, including 195 hospitalized in critical condition. A total of 175 hospitalized patients were on ventilators.
A total of 55,508 tests were processed Monday resulting in 375 new confirmed cases.
Israel's death toll from COVID stands at 6,253, and the number of people who have received both doses of the COVID vaccine stood at 4,861,451 on Tuesday morning, with 5,277,886 having received the first dose.
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