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‘We’ve lost the public’s trust,’ says Israel’s corona committee head

“We hear more and more people out of great distress threatening to break the closure,” the committee head said.

By David Isaac, World Israel News

The Knesset’s corona committee chairwoman, Yifat Shasha-Bitton, said, “We have lost the public’s trust,” at a Tuesday morning hearing to review quarantine strategy.

“Society has broken apart and we need to see how we can start rebuilding normal life,” she said. She noted it should be done carefully and not out of fear, Kan public broadcasting reports.

“We hear more and more people out of great distress threatening to break the closure. We have lost the public’s trust so to prevent anarchy we need to speak to it with logic and true transparency. Let the local authorities manage the crisis,” she told the committee.

Prof. Itamar Grotto, deputy director general of the Ministry of Health, said at the meeting that the lockdown was working and that the numbers were trending in the right direction. However, he said, “We are not yet at a number that allows us to start the first phase of the opening, but if it continues at the current pace, there is no reason why we should not reach the index with which we want to start opening on Sunday.”

Shasha-Bitton criticized Grotto at the meeting for narrowly looking at the data but “not at all at the economic and social breakup that people are experiencing here.”

Israel has been under a nationwide lockdown since September 18. The government is working on a multistage reopening that wouldn’t be completed until late January 2021. The gradual opening is meant to prevent a repetition of the government’s earlier mistake in which it opened too early, leading to a second wave of the disease that has been much worse than the first.

A scheduled Tuesday afternoon meeting of the corona cabinet may be postponed.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants the postponement. Alternate Prime Minister Benny Gantz of the Blue and White party opposes it. “The discussion on the exit strategy can’t suffer any further postponement,” Gantz said. “Small businesses continue to collapse, we must discuss getting children back” to school, he said.

Finance Minister Yisrael Katz, although from the Likud party, supported Gantz’s position.