Coronavirus: Health Ministry asks Israelis to avoid traveling abroad
The warning stressed that even people who are vaccinated might be at risk of getting infected with new variants and therefore recommended everyone not to leave Israel’s borders.
By ROSSELLA TERCATIN, REUTERSThe departure hall at the almost empty Ben Gurion International Airport near Tel Aviv on January 25, 2021. (photo credit: YOSSI ALONI/FLASH90)
The Health Ministry recommended Israelis to avoid unnecessary trips abroad to prevent new variants from entering the country, the ministry said in a statement on Thursday.Eight countries where the morbidity rate is especially high were mentioned in the travel warning: India, Ukraine, Brazil, Ethiopia, South Africa, Mexico and Turkey.The warning stressed that even people who are vaccinated might be at risk of getting infected with new variants and therefore recommended everyone not to leave Israel’s borders.In the past few days, health authorities expressed concerned over a new variant known as the Indian variant.Speaking to the army radio earlier on Wednesday, coronavirus commissioner Prof. Nachman Ash said that Israel has to worry about the Indian variant.“I hope that within a few weeks this concern will no longer be relevant as we can prove that the vaccine is effective against this variant,” he said, adding that the issue is being studied but no results are available yet.Meanwhile, only 0.2% of the coronavirus tests processed in Israel on Wednesday returned a positive result, the ministry reported on Thursday morning. The figure marks the lowest positive rate in almost a year, since May 15, when Israel was just coming out from its first lockdown and many believed that the country had managed to defeat the virus.Back then, only 5,000 tests were administered in 24 hours, compared to some 47,000 tests performed on Wednesday, a number in line with previous week days.In addition, all trends related to the disease remain encouraging. For the past week, the number of new daily cases has not exceeded 150 – on Wednesday they were 111. Overall, the country has only 2.054 virus carriers, down from several dozens of thousands. The reproduction rate or ‘R’ remains steadily around 0.7, showing that the infections are steadily declining.Also the number of serious patients continue to drop, reaching 166. For several days in January and February they were as many as 1,200.As of Thursday morning, only one person was reported to have succumbed to the disease on Wednesday. While sometimes it takes longer than one day for corona-related deaths to be reported to the ministry, if the number was confirmed it would mark the lowest toll since June.On Thursday, Israel is expected to reach 5 million people vaccinated with two doses, while some 5.37 million have received at least one shot.
