The measure was set to expire at midnight on Sunday. The MKs supported the proposal of committee chairman MK Yaakov Asher to give just a short extension to give the Health Ministry time to formulate alternative solutions for supervising those who require isolation.
“We are not talking about huge numbers, and perhaps the police will be able to tell us how home isolation can be enforced,” Asher said at the beginning of the meeting, expressing his intention to not support the longer extension. “If we can put a person in a motel, then it is probably better for them that we allow an electronic device that makes sure that they are in isolation.”
Starting from Sunday, about 2,000 Israelis per day are able to fly home from abroad, provided they receive the permission from the devoted special governmental committee. All people are currently required to enter isolation in a hotel except for people who are fully vaccinated and those who are exempt on a humanitarian basis.
Last week, the government announced that the country’s borders are going to remain close until March 6.
Starting from Tuesday, Israir will organize a flight a day reserved to those who are entitled to the green passport – individuals who are a week past the second coronavirus vaccination or who have recovered from the disease. The pilot is aimed at allowing people to reach the Red Sea city hotels, which reopened Sunday. In the next few days, Eilat is expected to return to its status of “green island” where facilities are also allowed to operate restaurants.
The airline stressed that the first flights will be sold at a special price: NIS 81 for Eilat residents and NIS 141 for residents of the rest of Israel. The flights will be numerated 315 and 316 – 316 being the numeric value of the Hebrew word “iaroq”, or green. In a following phase, Israir said it will increase the number of flights and open them to the general public.
Hotels are also operating under the green passport outline, as well as gyms, swimming pools, cultural and sports events. The race to obtain the certificate through the Traffic Light app by the Health Ministry and on the ministry’s website has strained the IT infrastructures, with many people lamenting problems. The ministry’s portal featuring the data about the pandemic was down for several hours from Saturday night to Sunday morning and on Sunday afternoon still carried the data from Friday.
Some 1,240 new cases of the novel coronavirus were reported on Saturday, according to a Sunday morning update by the ministry. While the data is only partially meaningful since on Shabbat the numbers of tests administered is consistently significantly lower than on weekdays, the figure of patients in serious conditions and the R rate also remained encouraging.
Some 857 were in serious condition and 273 on ventilators. The R rate, which measures the ability of the disease to spread, fell to 0.79, showing the pandemic is receding.
The death toll rose to 5,569.