(Times of Israel) Simona Weinglass - Prof. Yehuda Carmeli, head of the Department of Epidemiology at Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center and one of the medical professionals leading the Israeli Health Ministry's response to the coronavirus pandemic, was asked how Israel kept its death toll so relatively low. After more than a month in lockdown, the government has begun dramatically easing coronavirus restrictions, buoyed by a stream of encouraging statistics. Daily new cases were in the low dozens. And there were almost 240 fatalities, figures much less severe than countries of comparable size, including countries that imposed stay-at-home orders relatively early in their outbreaks. "This virus will probably stay with us for a very long time. Even if we are able to control it fantastically within Israel, at some point we will once again have more ties to the rest of the world. We will have to adapt to a different way of life," Carmeli said. "The reason for the low mortality rate is that although there was a lot of criticism about how many tests were done, Israel is among the leading countries in the world in testing people. We do a lot of tests so we detect a lot. Also, it's because most of our affected population are young people, and they have a very low mortality rate. If you look at the distribution of sick people in Israel, fewer than 5% are over the age of 80. That's the age where you start to see very high mortality rates. And in Israel, the population over 70 and 80 was quite well protected."
2020-05-06 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive