Israel shutters schools and universities as coronavirus battle rages on

Netanyahu announced on Thursday evening that Israeli schools and universities will be shut to thwart the spread of the coronavirus.

By World Israel News Staff

On Thursday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Israel is closing its schools and universities in an effort to prevent coronavirus contagion.

While Netanyahu excluded kindergartens, boarding schools, and special education institutions from the closures announced on Thursday, he noted that a forthcoming decision on those institutions would also be announced.

Netanyahu described the coronavirus pandemic as a “global event” that is “unlike anything else” that has occurred since the State of Israel was established.

While no one in Israel has died from the disease, the prime minister told the nation to brace for potentially “large numbers” of casualties from the virus, which has infected 109 people in Israel so far.

Israel also issued a ban on Thursday on the entry of any non-nationals incapable of self-quarantine, all but ending the nation’s generally robust incoming tourism industry.

Netanyahu’s announcement arrives a day after the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the coronavirus a pandemic and urged aggressive action from all countries to fight it, as U.S. stocks plunged into bear market territory and several American cities joined global counterparts in banning large gatherings.

“We have called every day for countries to take urgent and aggressive action. We have rung the alarm bell loud and clear,” WHO’s chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Wednesday.

“All countries can still change the course of this pandemic. If countries detect, test, treat, isolate, trace and mobilize their people in the response,” he said.

While Italy exceeds 12,000 cases and the United States has topped 1,300, China reported a record low of just 15 new cases Thursday and three-fourths of its infected patients have recovered.

China’s totals of 80,793 cases and 3,169 deaths are a shrinking portion of the world’s more than 126,000 infections and 4,600 deaths.

“If you want to be blunt, Europe is the new China,” said Robert Redfield, the head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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