Israeli-American Nobel laureate Prof. Robert Aumann came out firmly last Thursday against giving up more than four prisoners to Hamas as Israel negotiates indirectly with the terror organization for the release of two soldiers’ bodies and two live civilians.

“Israel needs to change the paradigm, present a new price list,” he said in a Makor Rishon article. “Cold, intellectual, uncompromising. There is no more one to 1,000 ratio. One living terrorist, in exchange for one living prisoner. The body of a terrorist in exchange for the body of an Israeli soldier.”

Hamas captured the bodies of IDF soldiers Oron Shaul and Hadar Goldin during Operation Protective Edge in 2014. Two mentally ill civilians, Abera Mengistu and Hisham al-Sayed, crossed into the Gaza Strip on their own in 2014 and 2015 respectively, and it is assumed that they are still alive in Hamas hands.

There can be no more “Gilad Shalit deals,” in which Hamas returned one live soldier in 2011 for 1,027 terrorists, he wrote, especially since “we’re still paying the price for him, in blood.”

The coronavirus - scientifically called SARS-CoV-2 - latches onto ACE-2 receptors, known as the 'gateway' into cells inside body. 

These receptors are found in the respiratory tract and the lungs, which is where the virus first infiltrates cells, as well as other organs.

A team led by Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine have now found the eyes produce ACE-2, making them a target for the virus.

It means if droplets from an infected person's sneeze or cough were to land on the surface of the eye, the virus could begin infiltrating cells there.

It may explain why some patients have suffered conjunctivitis - an inflammation of the eye which causes it to become red and infected.

Not only could the virus enter the body through the eyes, but tears may serve as a spread of infection, scientists said. 

The team was led by Lingli Zhou of the Department of Ophthalmology, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore.

They analysed ten human post-mortem eyes from people who did not die of COVID-19 for the expression of ACE2 (angiotensin-converting enzyme 2).

ACE-2 is understood to be the entry point for the virus. Its spiky surface binds to the receptors and, from there, infects the cell and replicates