More than 7 million coronavirus antigen testing kits arrived in Israel on Tuesday and Wednesday. The kits will be used to implement a government plan to keep students out of quarantine and in school, while also allowing parents to go to work. Under the Green Classrooms Plan, students in grades 1 through 12 in “green” cities who are exposed to the coronavirus can return to school after they get a negative result on a PCR test, as long as they continue to take a rapid antigen test every day for a week, instead of sending the entire class into a week-long quarantine. The launch of the plan was held up earlier this week due to a shortage of rapid antigen tests. “The kits will be used to test pupils in the education system in order to implement the green classrooms plan and enable the continuation of routine life for parents, pupils and the Israeli economy,” according to a statement from the Prime Minister’s Office. “With correct, close and flexible management, we will defeat the Delta strain,” Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said in the statement. Dr. Sharon Alroy-Preis, the head of Public Health Service at Israel’s Health Ministry, told the Jerusalem Post Conference on Tuesday that during the fourth wave of the coronavirus, dominated by the Delta variant, which started around mid-June, more than half of the cases, or some 55%, have been among children too young to be vaccinated.
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