Due to the nationwide COVID-19

lockdown, Israel’s unemployment rate

has skyrocketed in the last six weeks
from less than four percent to 24%. Much
suffering to the population unable who
have been put on leave without pay or
dismissed has resulted. 

Only employees in vital industries are

currently allowed to work.. The situation
won’t last forever, but as people are
gradually allowed to leave their homes
and go to work at the majority of jobs, a
technique is needed to reduce the risk of
virus infection while allowing the
economy to recover. 
Think of dieting. One can fast for two
months and lose weight, but you will
probably die. Even if you survive, you
will quickly gain weight again. Similarly, a
two-month lockdown will suppress the
coronavirus, but it will kill the economy. 
Lockdown will push hundreds of millions
of people around the world into
unemployment and poverty. Many
sectors of the economy will collapse. At
the end of each lockdown, remaining
patients will cause a resurge in the
epidemic, forcing another lockdown. This
is the well-known yo-yo effect, with the
number of coronavirus patients going up
and down. At the same time, the global
economy will be hit hard – and when the
dust settles, more people will have died
of hunger than of the coronavirus.

Prof. Uri Alon, a systems biologist at

the Weizmann Institute of Science in
Rehovot, and his team including graduate
students Omer Karin and Yael Korem-
Kohanim, together with senior engineer
Boaz Dudovich of Applied Materials, have
suggested a way out of this dilemma. 
Based on an epidemiological model they
developed, their proposed policy would
effectively suppress the coronavirus and
at the same time allow sustainable,
albeit reduced, economic activity. The
model that the scientists developed is
based on intermittent lockdown – five
days of lockdown and two days of work
every week. 
In this way, the virus replication number,
i.e., the number of people infected by
each infectious person, drops below one
– the magic number that causes the
epidemic to decline.

A four-day work/10-day lockdown

strategy is even better, the researchers
suggest, as it would allow those infected
at work to stop becoming infectious at
home. Alon noted that after several such
cycles, the number of infected people
would drop dramatically. The epidemic
could then be contained until sufficient
testing is carried out and an effective
medical treatment or a vaccine is
developed – which will remove the need
for a lockdown.
Intermittent lockdown may be the only
viable option for countries that can’t
deploy sufficient testing in time, the
Weizmann scholars continued. It would
allow millions to work two days a week,
sustaining key economic sectors. People
will hold a 40% position instead of being
completely unemployed – an economic
and psychological game-changer.
Fixed workdays for everyone will allow
workers and managers to plan ahead and
stay productive. “Our main message,”
concluded Alon, “is to open up the
discussion on lockdown and point out
that a well-designed smart lockdown
strategy can suppress the epidemic and
sustain the economy.”
Alon earned his bachelor’s and master’s
degrees from the Hebrew University of
Jerusalem and his doctoral
degree in theoretical physics from
the Weizmann Institute. After having his
interest in biology sparked, Alon headed
to Princeton University for
his postdoctoral work in experimental
biology. He returned to the Weizmann
Institute as a professor.
 
 

  
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