More than 400,000 Israelis were instructed to enter quarantine during July because of possible contact with confirmed carriers of coronavirus.
People entered quarantine after instructions were delivered following phone tracing by the Shin Bet Security Agency, epidemiological investigations, and by their own initiatives according to information obtained by Ynet.
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Police on assignment to enforce quarantine due to coronavirus
(Photo: Health Ministry)
But 224,000 were told to quarantine after the Shin Bet tracking system alerted them to possible contagion while only 67,000 were warned as a result of investigations conducted by health officials.
About 100,000 Israelis decided to self-quarantine out of an abundance of caution.
Last week the epidemiological investigations slowed after a change in personnel and the need to train the new recruits in the task.
Mistakes were also reported recently with the wrong people told to quarantine. While 50,000 people were released from the need to isolate after they appealed the instruction.
Health officials have indicated they were inclined to change the criteria for quarantine after being exposed to confirmed patients, reducing the time of isolation to 12 days but a final decision has not been made.
Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee chair Zvi Hauser who approves of the move said his committee which is set to extend regulations tasking the Shin Bet with tracing by two weeks said he would bloc an extension if the reduction is not made.
"We are talking about an astronomical number of people in quarantine and every day that we do not reduce the number of days in isolation costs the country vast amounts of money."
"Had quarantine lasted 12 days – we would have saved around 800,000 workdays," Hauser said.