What Is It Like To Get Diagnosed With The Coronavirus In The State Of Israel?

A few days into our quarantine, I started to feel ill myself. I had a cold and a sore throat, which rapidly developed into chills, headaches, and dizziness. As a result, my husband and I started to maintain a two-meter distance while sleeping in separate rooms and using separate bathrooms. When I started to develop shortness of breath and lost my sense of smell, I arranged to have a Magen David Adom medic come to my house to give me the coronavirus test, as I did not have the ability to leave my home to do it due to the fact I lacked a driver’s license. He came dressed in a big white suit and tested me. 

A few days later, I received a phone call from the Israeli Health Ministry, my family doctor, and the Netanya Municipality, notifying me that I had the coronavirus and must not leave my home. Israel’s Welfare Services called and offered me assistance. The Israel Police sent me an SMS warning me of consequences should I leave my home, yet also offered to help me if I needed it. Clalit Health Clinic left a device outside my door to monitor my breathing, as well as several masks and a booklet in Hebrew explaining how to prevent the coronavirus from spreading among different family members.  A Jewish organization offered me advice on how I could heal myself. 

From that moment onwards, I had to barricade myself in my office and could only leave it to go to the kitchen, balcony or bathroom wearing a mask. My husband took out the trash and got the newspaper for me, which he left outside my door. For one hour in the evening, I sat with my husband watching television in separate rooms, with me wearing a mask.  That was our only interaction. I was completely isolated from everyone. When my husband tested coronavirus negative twice, he was removed from quarantine due to the fact I self-isolated (if not, he would have had to spend an additional two weeks in quarantine after the first one ended) and sometimes ran errands. 

During these times, I had to watch the children from a separate room and thus could not really discipline them. It was not easy for me to be separated from my children. Nor was it easy on them. My baby son constantly tried to break down my office door and my daughter left numerous pictures outside of them, trying to cheer me up. At times, I yelled at them from a different room wearing a mask, but I did not dare approach them. 

For Shabbat, my husband made sure that he left the home with the kids to go to his mother that recently recovered from corona and only then I could be free at home. I felt like a bird liberated from a cage. It was not easy being secluded into one room like that. Having a stay-at-home order, I could deal with. It was the single room imprisonment that came with being diagnosed coronavirus positive that was exceedingly difficult for me.

Fortunately, because I am a journalist who generally works from home, I was able to work while I was in coronavirus isolation.  If I had not been able to do that, I would have gone crazy. While I was sick, I was a case with mild symptoms. I was fatigued, but I was not out of commission. I managed to get more work done in coronavirus quarantine than I could in lockdown without childcare support. That is what I told myself to cheer myself up.  At least in quarantine, nobody could bother me, telling me to clean this or that or to do x, y and z with the children. I had my quiet to work and to rest. And it was my work that mentally kept me sane in isolation.