Israel lifts travel restrictions to countries that were on its red list and reopens tourism to the vaccinated

Israel will lift this midnight travel restrictions to several countries that were still on its red list, a measure that initially sought to prevent the internal expansion of omicron and that it is now being withdrawn because the variant is already spreading throughout the country. As announced by the director general of the Ministry of Health, Nachman Ash, Israel will withdraw the last States that until now were on the list of countries to which Israelis were prohibited from traveling, among which were the United States, United Kingdom, Turkey, Switzerland , Ethiopia, Tanzania and Mexico.

Spain, France and most of the European Union countries were also on the red list until Israel removed them from this ranking this week.

From Sunday, Israel It will also reopen borders to fully vaccinated tourists, with booster doses or a second vaccine in the last six months, after it closed access to the outside at the end of November due to the expansion of the omicron variant.

With this restrictive measure, the country tried to cushion as much as possible the abrupt irruption of this most contagious strain, although it is now spreading rapidly throughout its territory.

Israel today registered a new record of daily infections since the start of the pandemic, with more than 16,000 new infections, while forecasting an exponential increase in cases in the coming weeks.

The percentage of positives reached almost 8% among more than 206,000 tests carried out and more than 72,000 people – in a country with a population of 9.4 million – are currently infected, according to data released today by the Ministry of Health.

In turn, the rapid spread of infections has forced the authorities to change their infection detection policy and to make greater use of rapid antigen tests.

Starting tomorrow, only people over 60 years of age or at risk will do a PCR test if they were in contact with infected, while those vaccinated under this age in good health will only undergo antigen tests.

In turn, Israel expects infection rates to decline as its vaccination campaign progresses with the fourth dose for medical personnel and adults over 60 years of age.

The process began this Monday and since then the new Pfizer vaccine booster has already been administered to more than 72,000 people.

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