Israel : The Struggle to Surmount COVID-19

"We are trying as much as we can to collaborate and have other ideas of other people. But the facility of the lab is very crowded and very busy and very dangerous so it has to be very slow and very cautious."
"[Arranging an animal test-subject is] a very big challenge [because] this disease is not affecting animals."
"It’s not enough only to detect neutralizing antibodies in the animal. You really want to see them getting sick and getting better by this vaccine."
"[The IIBR has a] unique animal [for such tests, as well as] a very unique technology to detect animals -- even if they are not really sick – to follow them and see their interaction with the disease."
Chief innovation officer Eran Zahavy,IIBR (Israel Institute for Biological Research, Ness Ziona, Israel

Israel's bio-chemical defence laboratory, a normally secretive institution, was tasked back on February first by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to pull out all the stops and focus on the emerging threat of the novel coronavirus out of Wuhan, China, rapidly spreading across the world and sowing havoc within the global scientific and medical fraternity trying to cope with the fall-out of a new, unknown pathogen, devastating populations and killing a huge percentage of those struck by its resulting grave respiratory illness.

The IIBR, according to its director Shmuel Shapira, is in the process of designing a vaccine prototype and the institute "is now preparing a model for commencing an animal trial". Israel's early commitment to focusing on the COVID-19 threat that has roiled the world community has been steady, and its population has been alerted to behave in a series of metered responses for self-protection to acclimatize it to the new reality of the presence of a highly infectious zoonotic agent.



At the strong and steady hand of the nation's embattled prime minister, Israel appears to be making all the right moves to protect its population, directing Israeli manufacturers to produce more respirators, searching foreign markets to increase its supply of needed medical equipment and prepared to pay the rising price for whatever it will take to ensure the health security of Israelis, while at the same time sharing test kits and medical cooperation with the Palestinians.

No country willingly goes into lock-down, much less having to order business to divert from its manufacturing purpose to re-purpose in an emergency. And nations that inform religious authorities that houses of worship must be temporarily shut down to prevent an agglomeration of people meeting together when safety dictates that physical distance must be maintained, know that there will be difficulties ahead, not the least of which is a back-lash and civil disobedience to follow.

So while most Israelis understand the sheer necessity of maintaining a physical distance, of the need to close down schools and universities, social meeting places, public parks, concerts, museums, art galleries, restaurants -- and adjust accordingly, there will always be groups within the larger society invested in continuing to do what is most familiar to them in their faith. In the belief that their faith alone will be more than enough to shield them from any health threats from an unknown, deadly agent.

"Synagogues have been the largest source of infection, together with clubs and shops", was Prime Minister Netanyahu's unequivocating position in a cabinet meeting whose audio content was leaked inadvertently to the public. "There is no choice. If you need someone to take responsibility, I will take responsibility", for the orders to close all public meeting places -- including synagogues -- to the assembly of large groups of people.

Israeli security forces arrest an ultra-Orthodox Jewish man as they close a synagogue in the Mea Shearim ultra-orthodox neighbourhood in Jerusalem, on March 30, 2020, amid efforts to curb the spread of COVID-19. Ahmad Gharabli/AFP via Getty Images

Yet the ultra-Orthodox object, one cabinet colleague chafing: "Look at all the time you spend discussing sport (the need to caution the population to exercise caution and maintain a physical distance if they're out in the public arena), yet you decide to close the synagogues with a flick of the hand". Most Israeli Jews tend toward the secular, not the religious, and the behaviour of the ultra-Orthodox is a matter of huge public contention, starting with their insistence that religious sanctions be practised without regard to the minority status of the ultra-religious, as well as their refusal to adhere to the country's universal conscription of young Israelis coming of age to serve in the military.

Over half of all those infected with the virus in Israel come from the ultra-Orthodox community. People hospitalized with serious symptoms are over-represented as well by the ultra-Orthodox. An occurrence that engenders resentment and anger among the general population, since everyone is thereby endangered since refusing to self-isolate and keep a physical distance not only results in those refusing common sense becoming ill and monopolizing the health system, but ensures the spread of the disease among the larger population.

Israeli police talk to a driver at a checkpoint in the city of Bnei Brak, a city near Tel Aviv with a largely ultra-Orthodox population, on March 31, 2020, as part of measures imposed to curb the spread of COVID-19. Jack Guez/AFP via Getty Images

Emergency restrictions are meant to be obeyed. The government has placed restrictions on social interactions and workplaces, and those who defy them risk fines up to $2.000 and even prison sentences of up to six months. Prayer and Divine intervention protects no one. The three months of dread disease spread throughout the world community has taught us much, but has failed to impress fully on people whose faith overturns common sense and reality.

There is no argument that the COVID-19 virus is an aggressive threat, bedeviling the scientific-medical community in its desperate search for a safe and reliable vaccine, and the terror it spreads within populations while it runs amok with no remedy yet in sight. Highly contagious, transmitted by asymptomatic individuals, this global threat must be contained and contagion rates controlled. In the Middle East neighbourhood Israel is by no means the only country that struggles to cope both with the virus and with the benighted attitudes of their own fanatical religious believers; in some instances that includes the governments themselves.

Israeli policemen enforce restrictions in a synagogue in one of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighbourhoods in Jerusalem, on March 31, 2020, during a partial lockdown to curb the spread of COVID-19. Menahem Kahana/AFP via Getty Images