mydailynewss

[mydailynewss]

To catch a coronavirus: 6 things to know for February 23

Israel is now isolation nation, thanks to some Koreans who toured around, as officials mull whom to ban next and what damage it may do, and Evgeny tries to sell us a miracle cure

1. In the footsteps of the Koreans: Israel is hitting the panic button after it emerged that some South Korean tourists who visited Israel earlier this month may have been carrying the COVID-19 coronavirus, throwing students, teachers, soldiers and anyone else who may have come into the contact with the group into self-quarantine and casting a sideways glance at anything below the 38th parallel (to say nothing of everything above it).

“This is really troubling,” an expert in contagious diseases tells the Ynet news site. “They went around the country, seemingly didn’t know they had the virus because they were only lightly ill. So there’s a real danger that the contagion will spread in Israel.”

News outlets publish the itinerary of the group, which spent nine days touring the Israel and the West Bank and try to find evidence of everywhere their feet trod the Holy Land.

That includes Channel 13 publishing a picture from a tour of Tel Sheva in which it says the Koreans can be seen in the background.

2. Guess who’s here: Add to that the fact that the virus was found — shockingly — in one of the people kept aboard the Diamond Princess cruise who had used the media to complain that they were fine and should be allowed to go home, and Israel has gone crazy for quarantines.

“The corona is in Israel,” screams a headline in Israel Hayom, using the word that has become local shorthand for the disease, even though only that one person has actually found to have it.

Yedioth’s front page is even more coronavirus-centric, being taken up almost solely by a Q and A about the virus.

“Is two weeks quarantine enough,” reads one question. “Actually no. At first they estimated that it took 14 days from the virus entering the body for symptoms to show, but now they know it can take a month. For now the original instruction have not changed.”

Hagai Levin, one the country’s top public health experts, tells Kan that “our working assumption needs to be that there are cases of corona in Israel that we don’t know about.”

Walla News reports that a second quarantine zone will be set up at Jerusalem’s Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital. Hospital head Zeev Rothstein tells the channel that the ward will be set up in the hospital’s old tower, which is being decommissioned. “We still haven’t finished tearing it down, so we have the option,” he says.

3. When fake news goes viral: Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan is quoted in Channel 13 saying that even if people don’t listen, the cops are ready to take action. And he says his ministry is preparing for the possibility of elections being tainted by the virus.

“I have ordered the police to prepare for the possibility that the disease could interfere with the elections, even via fake news used to mislead certain areas,” he says cryptically.

Channel 12’s Yaron Avraham writes that with all the news and campaigning over the last few months it seems the virus may end up being the thing with the biggest potential to decide the election.

“Just imagine a situation in which you get a message on your phone saying that someone suspected to be carrying the virus showed up at your polling station. It doesn’t mater if it seems fake, you won’t take the chance,” he writes.

Not to fear: Former Likud minister Ayoub Kara says he has the cure, and he got it from some guy named Evgeny: a machine made to purify water, or as he terms it “a special machine for stopping the spread of corona.”

“Evgeny gave it to me in Saint Petersburg. I’ll travel to Israel tomorrow,” he tweets, along with what appears to be his or Evgeny’s number.

Needless to say, the media and the internet has a field day with him, and not for the first time.