Health Minister Yuli Edelstein said on Thursday it would be "irresponsible" to end the nationwide COVID-19 lockdown while cases continue to surge across the country.
In a briefing with senior Health Ministry officials at Barzilai Medical Center in Ashkelon, the Likud lawmaker attributed the reason Israel has not seen a decline in infections like in the other two previous lockdowns to new variants of coronavirus that have been running rampant in recent weeks.