Meanwhile, about six teams of scientists have been working on medicinal, immunization and technology-use options to diagnose positive cases of the SARS-CoV-2 virus faster and for less cost. In the case of treatments, some that demonstrated laboratory effectiveness are moving to the phase of testing their findings in humans.

This information was shared by the Israeli ambassador in Panama, Reda Mansour, who in an interview with La Prensa, stated that his nation entered the pandemic last February and in a more difficult situation than most countries because "there are Israelis in every place in the world”, therefore, there is a lot of international movement. This, he said, led them to have relatively high numbers in terms of people who had contracted the virus.

However, he added, Israelis also have the advantage that their public health system is very large, very advanced and has highly trained professionals.

Therefore, after a few days of planning, the government managed to respond to the virus effectively, without opening new centers to treat people. They only used the hospitals that exist, which are almost all public hospitals (11). In addition, they used cell phones to follow up on positive cases and their contacts.

"If a vaccine is found, it will be provided to the people of Israel, who have shown great resistance, something surprising, but it will also have brought it to humanity," said Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel, during a visit to the Israeli Institute for Biological Research

The first confirmed case in Israel was registered on February 27, about two months after the epidemic broke out in the Chinese city of Wuhan, and some 14 days ago they resumed much of their activities, with the application of preventive measures recommended since the start of the pandemic by health authorities.

"Our way of treating people who arrived in a critical situation was successful and for this reason, although we have high numbers in terms of people infected, we have very low figures in terms of people who died from the virus," said Ambassador Mansour.

When you say they were successful in caring for critically ill patients, what do you mean, how did they do it?

We all know that the biggest part of the problem for people who came to hospitals in critical condition was their age, usually 70 years and over, or because they had other illnesses. And because we have high-level professionals for these conditions, hospitals, in establishing their situation, used different cocktails of medicines, depending on each patient, to treat their specific condition and help them resist the coronavirus.

How far has research progressed on treatment and immunization options?

Right now there are six different teams, some are teams from universities, others are from private or public companies. In terms of vaccines we are working on different types, such as medicine (to take) and classical vaccines, we are moving forward, we have come to produce laboratory products, more, the most important and sensitive part now is to have the same results in human experiments, have the same effectiveness.

At the same time, there are other teams that are working to create antibodies to treat the virus, to neutralize it and to stop it from attacking our different systems. There are at least two groups that managed to neutralize the virus under laboratory conditions and are now beginning their experiments to see if they have the same results in humans.

In Israel there is also some inconclusive experience with different types of medicines that we are using for other diseases. Part of these operations we are doing with other countries, they are international operations, especially with universities, which have no commercial interest in this matter.

Other components of this fight include new technological ideas, including an electrically connected mask that we could use during the day and connecting it basically cleans itself independently and can be used again. Another idea that two teams are working on is to create some device similar to the one we use today to take the temperature in which people can breathe and the device says whether it has a crown or not, if we manage to do this it is a major change in the entire system. of tests, which is the most complicated and expensive part of the operation. Another team is moving very fast to create a device to connect to our home computer and to do the test personally, using a little blood basically.

They are investing a lot of money in this.

Israel is one of the 10 leading countries in per capita investment in scientific research because almost the majority of our economy depends on the export of scientific technology and innovation. The government decided two weeks ago that only in coronaviruses and only the government, out of all other investments, we are going to dedicate 60 million dollars to help all the groups that are working at the moment, because we know that later we will be able to use these products in other sectors of our life.

For example, our security budget today is more than $20 trillion, but we use a lot of that advance on other issues, including health. One of those incredible ideas that came out was the Pillcam - a pill-sized camera that takes high-speed photos as it slowly passes through the intestinal tract, while sending images to a recording device - which came out of missile control technology; someone thought that if we could control a missile in the air 300 kilometers and reach this specific point, we could do other things with this technology.

When you say that there are more than 15,000 people - out of the more than 17,000 diagnosed - who no longer have the virus, is it because they were followed up, whether they were mild, moderate or severe cases, they were tested and the virus was negative?

Yes, we do many things, because the Covid-19 needs many components to deal with this situation. First, a digital system was organized to monitor the entire population of the country with cell phones. Every time we discover someone who has the virus, we make for each person a map of where they have been in the last 48 hours and we notify all the people we discover that they had been at the same time and at the same time - in a supermarket or pharmacy, for example with her, and we call all these people to do tests. In this way we control everything very punctually and very quickly.

Later, the entire system, part is municipal and part is governmental, connects with this person who was found to have the coronavirus, they look for where he lives, who his family is, and social, psychological services teams begin to work with them to see how we can monitor and see what is happening with the people around her. Most of the people stayed at home, with instructions for their family as well; and at the end of the days of quarantine of the infected we test the whole family. This helped a great deal to quickly control the epidemic.

On the other hand, for all Israelis returning from abroad, the government opened specific hotels to those who went from the airport and stayed there for 14 days, and before their departure they were also tested to make sure they had nothing.

There is also an important theme in all this. We feel that the Israelis are responding very responsibly across the board. For example, there were many videos of how families went with their children to visit their elderly family, but they do not enter the apartment but speak from the street, others make music for their parents, leave food in some way but do not enter the apartment. There is a culture that people understand very quickly what we are going to do and respond with responsibility and personal security.

Did you not adopt restrictive measures, for example, quarantine, as Panama did?

Yes, but less strictly. In Israel there were no hours to come to the supermarket and no gender separation. People could go to the supermarket and pharmacy more freely. There are limits to how many people can be in the supermarket, and how to queue to enter. We closed all big events, there is no public activity in the country, but there was almost always possibility to go out and walk around your house or apartment (50 meters, 100 meters), because we also understand the importance of the psychological part of fighting against this epidemic, we need to create this whole new environment and always have some kind of freedom. Again, to do this you have to have a lot of social responsibility, if you tell people they can go only 50 meters or 100 meters.

Israel is wide open today, says Ambassador Mansour, including schools. However, an outbreak in students and teachers in various schools has opened a strong debate on whether they should close them all again. Most of the restaurants and cafes are open, with a limit of people that can serve to meet the two meters of distance; beaches and national parks and all government offices are also open.

Amid that return and waiting for a drug or vaccine to emerge, Mansour says, they are making use of a "new code" that will be handled over the next six months, including the embassy in Panama. This implies having fewer people in each workplace and the rest working by telework, wearing masks in any public case and maintaining social distance.