Efrat has the second highest percentage of coronavirus carriers per capita in Israel. Why is that? And how are Efrat residents reacting to the plague?
To learn more, The Jewish Press recently spoke to three prominent Efrat residents: Oded Revivi, the mayor of Efrat; Dr. David Matar, a local pediatrician (and husband of Women in Green leader Nadia Matar); and Rabbi Sarel Rosenblatt, who is considered the leading candidate to become the next chief rabbi of Efrat.
How did the outbreak in Efrat start?
Mayor Oded Revivi: It started at a Purim celebration. Someone who had recently returned from America unwittingly infected 23 people during the party. When the news was broadcast, one of our residents came to me and suggested we establish a “Corona Commando Squad.”
Telephone and social network teams were established to locate all of the contaminated people, who were quickly isolated. We mapped the routes they had traveled, and told people who might have been infected that they must go into quarantine. Kits were acquired so people could be tested.
Using Efrat’s widely-used WhatsApp and Facebook groups, we sent out a general warning and posted up-to-date information on the developing situation. In the first week, 34 people tested positive. They were located in 27 different households. In the second week, another 25 people tested positive, but in only four additional families – meaning, our efforts were successful in containing the outbreak.
No one has had to be hospitalized. Ten people have already recovered. If Bnei Brak and other cities had responded immediately in a similar fashion, the outbreak would not have spread as widely as it has.
How have you helped keep quarantined residents spiritually strong?
Most everyone has Internet at home, save for a few of the elderly, and there is plenty of important material on the web. But to make people feel that the community was behind them, my Facebook page and the page of the City Council posted the Shabbat HaGadol shiur of Rabbi [Shlomo] Riskin and other shiurim too.
I have a regular story hour in Hebrew and English for children. Local entertainers have also donated their time to keep spirits from falling.
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The Jewish Press: Do you still see patients?
Dr. David Matar: For the last few weeks, we have been discouraging people from coming to the medical clinic and have been doing consultations over the phone. Parents send me photographs of rashes and are talking to me about things like the common cold for which you don’t really have to see a doctor.
People are learning that many of their visits to the clinic are unnecessary in the first place, so it may be the birth of a new form of Internet medicine.
As a physician, what advice do you give people?
I mainly emphasize the importance of keeping away from others. The virus spreads when people are crowded together, like at Purim parties.
Do masks help?
They didn’t seem to help on Purim. Masks don’t substantially help from getting infected, but they do prevent a virus from spreading if a person carrying the virus wears some kind of mouth covering when he or she is outside.
In Czechoslovakia, for example, where people wore masks from the beginning of the epidemic, there has been hardly any spreading of the virus.
The virus seems to spare children. As a pediatrician, do you have an explanation for that?
I can’t give you a detailed scientific response. It has to do with their immune system. Actually, the Covid-19 virus is not an overly aggressive virus, in and of itself. Rather, the complications arrive when an unhealthy immunological system interacts with it.
For some reason, the auto-immune defense mechanism of a child, teenager, or young adult suffers less damage when encountering the virus. In elderly people, whose immune system is partially dysfunctional, the encounter with the virus can prove fatal. But the devastating damage results from the improper reaction of the body itself, not directly from the virus.
What does this mean for the overall fight against coronavirus?
It means that governments had the option of isolating only the elderly while allowing the younger work force to continue. This would have built up a herd immunity. People would have gotten ill in minor dosages, like with the flu or common cold.
We know that many people carry the virus without getting overly sick, or without manifesting any symptoms at all. This might have saved economies that are now crumbling under the strain of the minimized work force. Other people have championed this approach in theory, but it has to be adopted at the very beginning.
Supporting this theory is the fact that the vast majority of people in Israel who have died from the virus are those very advanced in age, or people with previous medical problems, and in many cases it took both factors to bring about death.
The problem with the complete lockdowns, which more and more countries are adopting, is that they cannot be sustained forever. Sooner or later, Israel, America, and everywhere else, will have to isolate only the high-risk population, and let everyone else get mildly sick – but that is not a happy choice for politicians who hope to be re-elected.
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What is your Pesach message to the residents of Efrat?
Rabbi Sarel Rosenblatt: We have to recall that on the very first Pesach in Egypt, when the Jews ate from the Korban Pesach in their homes, a plague was raging outside. This year, our Seders will be very similar.
Our emunah in Hashem, and our simcha in being free to serve Him, originated when we were enclosed in our homes and couldn’t go outside. Precisely in this secluded and trouble-filled time, our forefathers forged a joyous connection to Hashem – and we can, too.
Precisely in this time of tribulation, we sit down to the Seder, secluded from the danger around us, poised to embark on a journey to redemption, to national Jewish independence and freedom, to a higher level of existence and connection to Torah, in order to reach the pinnacle of divine devotion through the life of a free and holy nation in our unique holy land.
Just as we have united together in Efrat to defeat a common foe, all the Jewish people will unite in our original mission to become a light to the nations, shining forth from Zion. A time of great salvation and spiritual blossoming awaits us.