Israel announced this Sunday (28) that it will ban all foreigners from entering the country, becoming the first country to completely close its borders in response to a potentially more contagious new variant of the coronavirus, and said it would use counterterrorism tracking technology phone to contain the spread of Ômicron variant.
Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said in a statement that the ban, pending government approval, would last for 14 days.
Authorities hope that within this period there will be more information on the effectiveness of vaccines against the Covid-19 in relation to Ômicron, which was first detected in South Africa and has been named a “concern variant” by the World Health Organization (WHO).
Israelis entering the country, including those vaccinated, will be quarantined, Bennett said. The ban will take effect at midnight between Sunday and Monday (29). The ban on traveling to foreigners coming from most African countries was imposed on Friday (26).
The counterterrorism agency’s Shin Bet telephone-tracking technology will be used to locate transmitters of the new strain in order to restrict transmission to others, Bennett said.
Israel will host the beauty contest Miss Universe on December 12, despite imposing travel restrictions, Tourism Minister Yoel Razvozov said on Sunday.
He said that contestants in the contest, to be held at the Red Sea resort of Eilat, will receive exemptions and undergo PCR tests every 48 hours and other precautionary measures.
Israel has so far confirmed one case of the Ômicron variant, with seven suspected cases. The Ministry of Health did not inform whether an infected person was vaccinated.
Three of the seven suspected people have been fully vaccinated, the ministry said on Saturday (27), and three have not returned from a trip abroad recently.
About 57% of Israel’s 9.4 million people are fully vaccinated, according to the Ministry of Health, meaning they have received a third dose of the vaccine. Pfizer / BioNtech or it hasn’t been five months since they received the second dose.
Israel has recorded 1.3 million confirmed cases of Covid-19 and more than 8,000 deaths since the start of the pandemic.
Reference: CNN Brasil
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