[russellw]

Originally Posted by FairmontGS

I wonder how Israel managed to stuff things up so bad? Unusual for them. They're usually on top of everything and ahead of the game.

Israel presents some interesting data from a study perspective. They have a National Health service with universal coverage for all residents but the hospital system is under stress at the best of times with lower rates of beds & nurses compared to the OECD average (2.2 beds & 5 nurses / 1000 population) when the OECD average is 3.6 and 8.8, respectively. Worth noting that Australia had 3.9 & 9.1 before the pandemic started. They are even worse for ICU beds / 100k with slightly under 4 (Australia was 9.4) so their ability to cope is somewhat limited. All of the above is exacerbated by being much worse outside the major cities.

The early response was good after their first case in February off the Diamond Princess. They closed borders and quarantined travellers returning from high-risk areas. They also quarantined diagnosed individuals but testing was slow to ramp up.

They also initiated mitigation steps included physical distancing and other measures like limiting the size of gatherings to 100 (11/3) and then 10 (15/3) as well as introducing a contact tracing app run by the Israeli Security Agency (and we had doubts about ours). From 19/3 they introduced a State of Emergency to make the rules enforceable and went into a lockdown similar to the current Victorian one including mandatory face masks from 25/3 and a 100M limit on the distance you could travel from home. In another mirror of Australia, from early April some cities were declared no-go hot spots and some even closed altogether.

These restrictions were gradually eased these from April 26th with reopening of street stores and barbershops but malls & gyms remained closed until May 7th when they reopened with restrictions on the number of people allowed and then on May 27th restaurants reopened, with restrictions on diners and masked staff.

In another mirroring of Victoria (or we pinched it from them) they implemented a gradual easing of lockdown restrictions included allowing outdoor groups <20, removal of the 100M limit and meetings with family members however they set reverse targets for that easing with restrictions being reintroduced if any of a number of things happened like (1) >100 new daily cases (excluding overseas arrivals, retirement homes and cases in known hotspots) (2) the doubling time of infections decreases to 10 days or (3) the number of patients in serious condition reaching 250.

Additional easing of restrictions continued throughout May and looking at that first wave graph below, you'd say they had done a good job with an early peak in the 7-800 bracket and then a gradual reduction down to ~25 cases a day with one spike that coincided with a religious celebration.



Comment: As a country with 8.6M people it's not much more than the 6.6M in Victoria and the adult populations are even closer (5M for Victoria & 6.2M for Israel) plus the population density of 400 per km² is not dissimilar to that of Greater Melbourne which is ~500.

The good news ends there. From late May it was clear that case numbers were starting to rise again but they didn't reintroduce countermeasures until July 1st with the tracking app reauthorised for use. Then on July 6th they introduced: restriction of social gatherings to <20 indoors and 30 outdoors as well as the closure of gyms, night clubs and other venues.

From 17th July, these were further tightened with no seating in bars or restaurants; weekend lockdown of non-essential businesses; beach closures and gatherings limited to 20 people outdoors, and 10 people indoors but most of those were reversed after complaints from the business community including re-opening of restaurants, pools, and beaches and weekend closures of malls / markets cancelled.

In late August they introduced a traffic-light system to rank the severity of the pandemic in each city / town / region and then closed schools and introduced a night-time curfew for towns for those classified as 'red' from September 6th.

From 18th September there is a national lockdown for 3 weeks with:

- people limited to within 500M of their homes, except for work and essential activities such as buying food;
- closure of malls, stores (except food / pharmacies), hotels, restaurants, fitness clubs and swimming pools;
- gatherings limited to 10 people indoors, or 20 people outdoors;
- closure of schools;
- no seating in bars or restaurants (delivery service & take-away allowed).

On 10th September they became the country with the highest rate of COVID-19 infections per capita with 2,198 per 100k.

The 25th May onward graph below show two things: (1) the case numbers are much higher than the first wave with peak and average case numbers up to 10x greater; and (2) the measure introduced along the way seem to have had very little overall impact.



Comment: I think the targets for reintroduction of restrictions were too high; they were too slow in reintroducing them and they caved in to business pressure when they should have stuck to their guns. I expect they will have to extend the current lockdown or risk a 3rd wave.

Here is the entire timeline graph: