The paper will first describe the challenges that the Israeli teacher education colleges faced during the Coronavirus outbreak. It will then present an initiative launched by the Israeli Ministry of Education (MoE) to open an alternative route of an initial teacher education programme geared towards academics who lost their jobs as a result of the epidemic and are interested in re-training themselves to become teachers. The final part will discuss the main conclusions and reflections on the situation which can be drawn at this point in time.