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South African President Cyril Ramaphosa announces a ban on alcohol sales and says mask-wearing would be mandatory in public, as his country became the continent’s first to record one million coronavirus cases.
Ramaphosa says during a televised speech that alcohol would be temporarily banned from midnight to help emergency services already under pressure.
He also announces it would be “compulsory for every person to wear a mask in public spaces,” saying it was a “drastic measure, now necessary.” I m proud to work at The Times of Israel
I’ll tell you the truth: Life here in Israel isn’t always easy. But it s full of beauty and meaning.
(Judy Maltz)
2:04 P.M. Assisted living home staff to be vaccinated
Ichilov Medical Center in Tel Aviv will inoculate the tenants and staff of assisted living facilities in Tel Aviv. This is a large campaign that will cover about 40 facilities in the city, covering about 8,000 people and a total of about 16,000 vaccines. Ichilov staff will deploy a large contingent of nursing staff to visit each facility at least four times during the campaign. (
Bar Peleg)
Controversy erupts over how coronavirus patients will vote in potential election
During the reading of the Law to Dissolve the Knesset, a disagreement erupted regarding how coronavirus patients would cast their vote in an upcoming election, stemming from fears of passing on the virus, scaring off healthy voters or the spreading of fake news.
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The Walla news site reports that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is seeking to appoint Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz as the next US ambassador in place of Gilad Erdan, who is supposed to take up the role in addition to the UN envoy position he already holds.
Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
According to the outlet, Netanyahu is meeting with Erdan, and giving him the choice of choosing which position he wants to keep and which he wants Steinitz to have.
Steinitz has been closely involved in US and UN-brokered negotiations with Lebanon over a maritime border dispute.
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Palestinian security forces block the main northern entrance to enforce curfew amid the COVID-19 pandemic in the West Bank town of Hebron, on December 11, 2020 (HAZEM BADER / AFP)
Palestinian Authority senior health official Osama al-Najjar announced on Saturday that four million doses of the Russian coronavirus vaccine would be delivered in the coming weeks, as Palestinians witnessed the highest daily death toll as a result of COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic.
“Four million doses of the Russian coronavirus vaccine are expected to arrive soon…by the end of the year or the start of 2021, we will begin to inoculate those most at risk [for the coronavirus],” al-Najjar said in an interview with Voice of Palestine Radio on Saturday morning.
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There’s no official word yet on the government’s reported decision to walk back its plans for Hanukkah restrictions.
However, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu boasts on Twitter that Israel has “among the lowest death rates among coronavirus sufferers in the world.”
“We made the right decisions, saved many lives, and that’s what we will continue to do,” he says, without detailing what decisions he is referring to.
He attaches a chart of unknown provenance showing death rates of coronavirus sufferers, showing Israel as the second-lowest of a handful of countries, beaten only by Iceland.
שיעור התמותה בין נדבקי הקורונה בישראל הוא מהנמוכים בעולם. קיבלנו את ההחלטות הנכונות, הצלנו חיים רבים, וזה מה שנמשיך לעשות. pic.twitter.com/2lwQU7xEes