As the new Omicron variant spreads within the country, Israel might soon lift at least some of the travel restrictions it put in place to slow it down, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and other government officials said Sunday.
Bennett addressed the issue during the cabinet meeting at the request of Tourism Minister Yoel Rezbozov.
"It is time to end with the isolation of vaccinated Israelis returning from abroad,” Tourism Minister Yoel Rezbozov.
“It no longer has medical value.”
“I think it should happen this week,” he further said. “At the same time, we should allow the return of vaccinated foreigners to Israel, because, despite the aid package, the tourism industry and the economy will not be able to continue to bear this burden.”
“It will probably happen this week as we reach the infection numbers that at the time we said would bring about this change,” Bennett replied, adding that the Tourism, Interior and Health ministries will meet to formulate the new policy.
When South African scientists announced to the world that a new highly-mutated variant was causing a surge in cases in their country at the end of November, Israel immediately closed its borders to all foreigners and required everyone coming back from abroad to quarantine for a minimum of three days – even those fully vaccinated.
Soon after it also limited traveling for its own citizens by labeling an increasing number of countries as red – where Israelis cannot travel without governmental permission.
The government said that the measures would only be temporary as they were meant to prevent the variant from penetrating Israel or at least slow it down.
In the past few days, however, cases have been skyrocketing, a clear sign that Omicron is rampant in Israel.
Of the 4,200 cases identified on Saturday, only 6% was recorded among people who returned from abroad, while the rest 94% of the infections happened in the community. In the past week, the rate were respectively 12 and 88%.
The issue was also discussed during the meeting of the Knesset Law and Constitution Affairs committee.
“We have not closed the sky, we are identifying countries in which the percentage of verified people returning from them is 10 times higher than what exists in the State of Israel and only these countries remain red,” Dr. Sharon Elroy Preis, Head of Public Health Services at the Health Ministry said speaking before the Committee.
“When we reach a situation where the imported disease is marginal and stands at 5% or less of the morbidity in the State of Israel, all this will stop."
During the meeting, Committee head MK Gilad Kariv (Labor) warned that he would cancel all red COVID-19 designations of countries on Tuesday if the Population and Immigration Authority continued to deny entry requests from foreign citizens without due process.
At the moment, the list of red countries includes the US, the UK, Canada, France, the UAE, Ethiopia, South Africa, Hungary, Tanzania, Nigeria, Spain, Portugal, Switzerland and Turkey.
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