The government is considering a legislation that would make it possible to require corona tests

The government is considering advancing legislation that would make it possible to require corona tests, according to which if a person does not perform the test as required, he will be charged with a criminal offense that will be enforced by a fine - according to a government law memorandum distributed tonight (Monday) by the Ministry of Health. This is a very unusual proposal, which states that "the possibility" of advancing the legislation is being considered to "address a situation of concern about the outbreak of a dangerous strain of the corona virus, such as a vaccine that is less effective, or a violent strain of the virus that causes more serious illness."
The Ministry of Health wants to allow a duty of inspection in certain places, even those that will not be charged with a green or purple mark, and thus reserve the right to a duty of inspection in certain places. Nowadays, when a person enters a place without a green mark, the person who is bound by the mark is not a criminal offense - and he cannot be fined for it.
On Monday evening in the closed part of the weekly cabinet meeting, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said he "does not see on the horizon the abolition of the green mark because it keeps us and allows the country to remain open."
At the beginning of the meeting, the Prime Minister also spoke about the decline in the data verified for the virus, and announced the steps that the government is taking to prepare for the next waves of the corona. Bennett claimed that alongside the success in dealing with the current wave of the virus, the government will also prepare for the future by creating a "10 billion shekel economic and medical safety net for future corona waves that could happen another month, another six months or not at all." An outline for a one-time expansion of the budget framework in 2022, the so-called 'box', as part of drawing lessons from previous waves. "
"We are coming out of the Delta Wave these days," he said, adding, "We have dropped from the 300 serious patients threshold. However, in Europe and in many countries of the world 'Winter is coming' "Many of us have just gone through this. We are sharing this knowledge with the nations of the world in a continuous and open manner."
Data from the Ministry of Health from Monday morning show that the morbidity continues to decline. Yesterday, 324 new infections were diagnosed in Corona, with a positive rate of 0.98% - the lowest figure for the first time since 10 July. The number of patients in critical condition is 307, of whom 157 are connected to respirators. The ministry's data show that so far 3,896,785 people have been vaccinated with the third vaccine. Yesterday, two people died from complications of the virus, with a total of 8,046 people having died in Israel since the outbreak of the plague.
The head of the public health services, Sharon Elrai-Price, referred today to the Knesset's Constitution, Law and Justice Committee to the disease situation, and said that there is a fear that one of the variants will be "vaccine bypass". "There is an emergency in the world and if we do not save it, we may endanger ourselves again," she said. The commission approved a further extension, for the eighth time, of the state of emergency due to coronary heart disease for another two months. The committee's chairman, MK Gilad Karib, supported the extension "with a heavy heart," adding that "one should be careful of such a permanent situation in a democratic state."
Elrai-Price noted that morbidity in Europe, despite the high volume of vaccines, "is on the rise. We see this in recurrent morbidity, even in the UK which is highly vaccinated, and in all of Eastern Europe with a wave we think is delta." She explained that in Europe the new variants are not paved and therefore "we do not know what exactly is going on there". She noted that this situation "puts Israel at risk for a highly contagious variant, which will continue to infect about a third or a quarter of the unvaccinated population, and this will lead to a high wave of morbidity."