TEL AVIV (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 17th March, 2020) Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced a series of new measures in connection with the spread of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) and said that there would be no total lockdown in the country.
"The transition of the public sector to the format of the state of emergency, the private sector is switching to a reduced format, state services - in full format," Netanyahu said.
"We do not lock people at home. I'm not talking about a total lockdown, I hope we will not get to this," he said, adding that a local quarantine was possible.
According to the Israeli Health Ministry, 298 Israelis were diagnosed with the novel coronavirus, the condition of four of them is assessed as serious.
The World Health Organization (WHO) on March 11 declared the outbreak of the novel coronavirus disease a pandemic. More than 164,000 people in some 150 countries are already infected, over 6,400 people have died.
The coronavirus outbreak was first registered in December 2019 in China's Wuhan. In Europe, the most coronavirus-affected country is Italy.
