On March 30, around 8pm, when the Ministry of Health disclosed its daily update, it finally became clear: Israel was winning the war against COVID-19.

The number of known cases only increased by 11% that day, even though Israel was testing twice the amount of people it did a week earlier. Those 448 new cases accounted for only 9% of the 5,240 tests conducted five days before (it takes on average five days to receive the results). As a comparison, on March 24, Israel disclosed close to 500 new cases out of 2,350 tests. This was the first and most tangible proof that Israel was successfully flattening the curve. Since then, this positive trend has continued and the daily increase in known cases has dropped to only 3%.

At the same time, Israel’s health care system has shown no sign of distress. Israeli doctors and nurses, even if more than 1,500 of them are quarantined, can still treat all their patients without making the tough choices their peers in other countries had to make. One of the best ways to track this situation is to compare the number of deaths with the number of known infected patients two weeks prior. In Israel, this ratio was stable at 5%, and has recently dropped to only 3%.

The other reassuring fact is that there are more than enough ventilators to treat the most serious cases. Experts disagree on the exact number, but there could be up to 2,800 ventilators still available in the country. This compares well to our 200 patients in serious condition and 150 in moderate condition.

Of course, the situation is far from perfect, and many mistakes were made. Even if the country was early at enforcing targeted quarantines and travel restrictions, we waited too long, after the Purim holiday, to implement a full lockdown. Even if the government quickly recognized the importance of testing and used the full strength of its intelligence and military power, the health care system still lacks the necessary amount of reagent to ramp its testing capacity from 10,000 to 30,000 a day. Even if a lockdown was finally ordered and mostly respected, the government either tolerated or underestimated the lack of compliance from extremist sections of the ultra-Orthodox population.

But it is undeniable that Israel is doing much better than most democracies outside of Asia. It has only counted 11 deaths per million people so far, compared to 60 in the US, 200 in France, and more than 300 in Italy or Spain. Despite the shortage in reagent, Israel managed to conduct 17 tests per 1,000 people, in line with Germany (16), but higher than South Korea (10), the US (8), France (5), and the UK (4).

The perseverance of Israel’s health care ministry officials, the quality of its medical workers, the enforcement capabilities of its security apparatus, and also the capacity of its population to mobilize and even thrive in times of crisis, deserve all the credit. In the national psyche, there is no acceptable level of casualties. Everything must be done to avoid deaths. After all, protecting its citizens is the country’s raison d’etre.

Israel’s success is even more extraordinary given how uniquely dysfunctional its political class has been. Let’s start with the obvious: there is no government at the helm, only a group of interim ministers backed by a minority of Knesset members. But there is so much more. The only reason our acting prime minister is currently not standing trial for three separate corruption cases is because our courts are closed due to the lockdown.

Our health minister, a non-medical professional indicted for fraud and breach of trust in a child sex abuse scandal, tested positive after violating the very social distancing rules he was supposed to implement. Our finance minister announced his upcoming retirement in the middle of the fight. Our defense minister alternates between overly optimistic and catastrophic statements in a desperate effort to steal the show from our prime minister.

Our former Knesset speaker tried to defy the authority of our High Court. Our interior minister, a former inmate of our prisons and currently indicted in a new corruption case, seems more interested in the sensitivities of his religious electorate than the common good of the country. The opposition parties are no better. Its main leader is breaking his core campaign promise as he considers sitting in a government led by an indicted prime minister. The head of our Labor party hopes that getting a ministerial post will make his voters forget he led the party to its worst electoral performance since the creation of the Jewish state. And finally, our president, normally so focused on being a role model for the country, had to admit he breached the Passover curfew by having his daughter join him for seder.

Even if Israel is winning this war, more critical battles await. The widespread incompetence and lack of morality of our politicians could have disastrous consequences. How can we trust them to wisely spend a $22 billion stimulus package when unemployment has jumped from 4% to 25% and many families are at risk of falling into poverty? How can we trust them to choose the right strategy to successfully exit this confinement and not reignite infections?

Once again, our people, government officials, private sector, and non-profit organizations will have to step up and make sure that our country continues to show the world it can be a leading inspiration to fight this deadly virus.

Benjamin Canet is an investor based in Israel, a new immigrant, and a former UJA-NY Board member.

The opinions presented by Algemeiner bloggers are solely theirs and do not represent those of The Algemeiner, its publishers or editors. If you would like to share your views with a blog post on The Algemeiner, please be in touch through our Contact page.