Municipalities aim to take command ahead of second coronavirus wave

Municipal control and regulation system will allow each municipality to identify and locate

By ANNA AHRONHEIM
Head of the IDF's Homefront Command Maj.-Gen. Uri Gordin and Mayor of Rishon Letzion Raz Kinstlich (photo credit: ODED KARNI)
Head of the IDF's Homefront Command Maj.-Gen. Uri Gordin and Mayor of Rishon Letzion Raz Kinstlich
(photo credit: ODED KARNI)
Israeli municipalities will play a larger role in the fight against the coronavirus alongside the Homefront Command should a second wave break out, using a municipal control and regulation system.
The system is based on a computer system already in use by the Homefront Command and is the brainchild of Maj.-Gen. (ret.) Israel Ziv, who saw the need for one which can be used by every municipality and can then make decisions relevant for each city, rather than requiring every municipality to rely on a nation-wide system.
Throughout the crisis, municipalities complained that there were major accuracy gaps in the data provided to them by the Health Ministry, making it almost impossible to manage the crisis.
According to Roi Folkman, a consultant with the team led by Ziv, the second wave must be managed on a municipal level so each response can be nuanced and done as quickly as possible.
“We understand that the coronavirus is a health risk that we must contend with for the near future,” he told The Jerusalem Post. “One of the most effective ways to manage a crisis is to have the Homefront Command work alongside each municipality.”
The municipal control and regulation system has two main pillars that would focus on locating and stopping clusters of the virus early on (the Red Pillar) and the second (the Blue Pillar) would focus on maintaining routine life under the coronavirus.
Folkman explained to the Post that the Red Pillar would use a system developed by the Weizmann Institute which would be able to differentiate between various neighborhoods, street by street, in different cities across Israel, and identify clusters of the virus before a larger outbreak occurs.
By law, the identities of individuals diagnosed with the coronavirus are confidential and municipalities do not have the authority to collect that information or make it public. But with the system, every city would know who has the virus and they would then be able to determine whether someone would need to be quarantined in a state-run facility, be transported to a hospital, or whether they could safely quarantine at home.
The Blue Pillar would take in all data provided by the Health and Education Ministry as well as civil bodies and provide daily updates to allow for businesses and schools to reopen as long as they adhere to the Health Ministry regulations.
A pilot of the system was rolled out on Wednesday in Rishon Letzion at a ceremony attended by the Mayor of Rishon Letzion Raz Kinstlich, head of the Federation of Local Authorities, Modi’in Mayor Chaim Bibas, Hadera Mayor Zvi Gendelman, Maj.-Gen. (ret.) Israel Ziv and the new head of the IDF’s Homefront Command Maj. Gen. Uri Gordin.
It was Gordin’s first public appearance since he assumed the role last week from Maj.-Gen. Tamir Yadai who oversaw the Homefront Command’s role throughout the crisis.
According to Kinstlich, “we worked hand in hand with the Homefront Command many times, most recently during Operation Black Belt when rockets fell in Rishon [Lezion]. But during corona, we didn’t. I was one of the last to know when a teacher in a kindergarten was diagnosed with corona, and that’s not ok.”
Bibas, who has voiced criticism of how the Health Ministry handled the epidemic and has urged local leaders to bypass the Health Ministry to handle the virus on a municipal level, told the crowd that while the right decisions were made on a national level at the start of the epidemic, “after Passover and until today, there’s no one to work with.”
The municipalities, he said, are dealing with an unseen enemy but know how to handle such crises, especially when working hand-in-hand with the Homefront Command.