The mayor of Eilat on Monday blasted the rumored government decision, which placed the resort city on a list of communities with high infection rate, as the "dumbest".
Ministers on Sunday approved night-time curfews for 40 "red" communities with a high coronavirus infection rate, which is set to take effect sometime this week. The full, official list of communities is set to be made public later on Monday.
Meir Yitzhak Halevi told Ynet he is dumbfounded and doesn't have "a shadow of a clue" as to why the city is said to have been placed on the "red" list.
"It is a ludicrous decision, this is a city that in July and August hosted more than half a million Israeli tourists," he said. "All this time we have been a 'green city' with a single-digit number of verified coronavirus cases."
He said imposing curfews in the city would hurt the tourist industry in Eilat even further. "This is the dumbest thing they could do. We are still bleeding from the previous lockdown."
"At the height [of the epidemic in Eilat] we had 23 verified carriers. For the past week there has been an increase, but not a dramatic one. It is a city with 67,000 residents that hosts 80,000 tourists every week," he added.
"We do not have any coronavirus patients in the hospital, and to say the city is being closed down is a crazy move."