The Coronavirus Cabinet will convene this morning to discuss proposals by coronavirus coordinator Prof. Ronni Gamzu, including extending school closures in "red" cities as well as traffic restrictions in these cities, from night curfews to business closures to full closures.

The Cabinet will also be asked to approve adding several other cities to the list of the 23 "red cities", including Bnei Brak and Elad. In recent days, there an outbreak of morbidity has been reported in the haredi sector and there are neighborhoods in "orange" localities - Ashdod, Jerusalem, and Beit Shemesh - that are "swinging" and may be declared "red".

Health Ministry sources claim most of the new increase in morbidity in the haredi cities is due to infection within yeshivas.

The Health Ministry this morning said that in the past day a negative record was broken again in the number testing coronavirus positive, with 3,074 people declared new carriers.

In total there are officially 23,698 active patients, with the condition of 418 defined severe and 125 of them on ventilator. The rate of positive tests is reported at 9.4% of all tests.

The number of deaths since the outbreak of the virus officially stands at 969 patients.

Meanwhile, the Constitution Committee canceled the special discussion on the traffic light plan planned for today, because Gamzu, the plan's initiator, did not confirm his attendance.

Committee Chairman MK Yaakov Asher said in response that "Gamzu should come to the committee, present the plan, and answer questions of Knesset Members."

A new study commissioned by Revolver News concludes that COVID-19 lockdowns are ten times more deadly than the actual COVID-19 virus in terms of years of life lost by American citizens.

Drawing upon existing economic studies on the health effects of unemployment to calculate an estimate of how many years of life will have been lost due to the lockdowns in the United States, and weighing this against an estimate of how many years of life will have been saved by the lockdowns, the results suggest that the lockdowns will end up costing Americans over 10 times as many years of life as they will save from the virus itself.

A recent report by the New York Times entitled Your Coronavirus Test Is Positive. Maybe It Shouldn’t Be stated that "the usual diagnostic tests may simply be too sensitive and too slow to contain the spread of the virus."