Netanyahu Ally Calls for Immediate Lockdown to Halt Virus Spread

(Bloomberg) --

A political ally of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called for an immediate lockdown of 10 to 15 days to halt a second coronavirus outbreak.

“In the end, that’s what we will have to do, so it’s better to do it earlier rather than later,” Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz said Monday in an interview broadcast on the Ynet website. He said he advocates a “porous” lockdown that would allow people out only to go to work and shop for food and medicine.

A strict lockdown had brought down the number of daily new cases to low double digits, but a flawed reopening sent that number as high as 1,500 earlier this month. In all, close to 39,000 cases of coronavirus have been confirmed in Israel, including more than 360 fatalities.

One reason it’s critical to bring down the rate of infection is to renew passenger flights abroad, Steinitz said.

“Being cut off from the rest of the world is dangerous to our economy,” he said.

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