It is a preventive quarantine. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, 70, was tested negative for coronavirus on Monday, March 30. He was initially placed in preventive quarantine because an employee of his office had tested positive Monday at Covid-19.

"Before the epidemiological investigation is completed and to dispel any doubt, the Prime Minister decided that he and his close staff would be in containment," Benjamin Netanyahu's services told AFP in the afternoon. , in power continuously for 11 years.

In the evening, his office announced that tests on "the Prime Minister, his family and his team [were] negative" but that as a preventive measure, he would remain in quarantine in his official residence in Jerusalem until the ministry de la Santé decides otherwise.

This quarantine comes in the midst of talks by the outgoing Prime Minister with his ex-rival Benny Gantz in order to form a government of "unity and crisis" to precisely curb the coronavirus pandemic in Israel, where 4,695 cases including 16 dead, have been officially listed.

"Significant progress" in the negotiations

The two sides reported Sunday "significant progress" in their negotiations to end the longest political crisis in modern Israeli history.

The country has been ruled for over a year by transitional governments without the support of the majority of parliamentarians.

Benjamin Netanyahu, whose trial for corruption has been postponed due to the pandemic, and Benny Gantz, a 60-year-old ex-army chief, met over the weekend in hopes of unblocking the talks and endow the country with a stable cabinet after facing off in three elections in less than a year.

According to his office, the Prime Minister conducted the majority of his recent political talks by videoconference.

Benny Gantz, head of the centrist Blue-White coalition, justified this rapprochement with his rival by the need to stem the crisis of the new coronavirus which prompted the authorities to impose a series of emergency measures.

Reinforced containment measures

Monday evening, Benjamin Netanyahu announced from his residence that the public sector and industry will reduce their working capacity to 15% (against 30% currently). The government will further tighten its restrictions on the coronavirus, he added.

Israelis can no longer leave more than 100 meters from their homes unless they go to a grocery store, pharmacy or hospital. Access to places of worship, including synagogues, has been restricted and gatherings of more than ten people are prohibited.

The Prime Minister now wishes to ban outdoor gatherings of more than two people who are not from the same family, making it more difficult to hold prayers in front of neighborhood mosques or synagogues.

The police patrol the big cities of this country of nine million inhabitants to enforce these instructions, knock on the door of houses to see if the occupants respect the rules of confinement and occasionally distribute salted fines. So far, authorities say, more than 50,000 confined homes have been visited by police.

With AFP

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