Earlier this week, the Israeli Government, via the Coronavirus Cabinet, adopted Prof. Ronni Gamzu’s plan, which is officially called the rather dramatic “Shield of Israel plan” but everyone just calls the traffic light plan. If you’re a regular, you know I’m sceptical about the plan because it currently calls for a significant easing of social […]
Category: Covid-19
Covid Roundup 30 August
Gamzu plan authorized…ish? The Coronavirus Cabinet today finally voted unanimously to adopt the Gamzu Plan, which is known in Israel as “Tochnit HaRamzor”, the traffic light plan. Under the plan, cities will have different rules according to the level of infection, with additional restrictions on red cities and relaxations in most everywhere else. It will […]
Hospital numbers should be down; they’re up
In some sense, hospital numbers and deaths are the only ‘real’ measure of how a country is tackling the coronavirus pandemic. On that measure, things have taken a turn for the worse this week. The drop in test positivity led me to predict that hospitalisations and serious cases would fall this week. In fact, the […]
Covid Roundup 25 August
Just a few brief updates: Serious Covid-19 cases in Israel are up to 427, the highest recorded number since the start of the pandemic. 121 are on ventilators, the highest since the last wave. I suspect that this increase is because of the higher age profile of recent new infections — more on this in […]
Good news: case positivity is down
A few positive signs from the data on Israel’s fight against the coronavirus: Test positivity is down The percentage of tests that come back as positive for the coronavirus is one of the best measures of how widespread the real infection is likely to be. In late July, Israel was hitting 8% average positivity, but […]