Another day, another rule change for Israel entry requirements.
Just a week ago, Israel started requiring everyone returning to Israel to enter a COVID hotel for quarantine due to fears about the UK variant of COVID-19 that was spreading abroad.
Now the country is ditching that requirement and all passengers will have to take a COVID test upon landing and then quarantine at home for 14 days. That quarantine can be shortened to 10 days if a 2nd PCR test is taken on the 9th day of quarantine.
https://twitter.com/YuliEdelstein/status/1343909933742510081
Passengers that refuse to take a COVID test upon landing will still have to go to a COVID hotel.
There is talk of cancelling quarantine requirements for those who have had both vaccine shots, though that has yet to be finalized.
Israel is currently under a 3rd lockdown and leads the world in per capita vaccination rates. They hope to be able to gradually open up in April after more than a year of closed borders, though only to countries with low COVID-19 infection rates. I guess that means we’ll see a return of green and red countries?
After jumping through some bureaucratic hoops, we were exempted from the hotel quarantine requirement. Nearly everyone else from our flight went to Corona hotels.
All their strict rules and they still do not have the virus under control, so what are they accomplishing besides destroying their economy?
They’re avoiding an even worse outbreak, and hopefully they’re reducing the severity of the outbreak for the weeks ahead (all indicators are lagging, so interventions taken today won’t yield immediate improvements).
What about those with positive antibody tests from Israel?
3rd lockdown. LOL
Lockdowns only increase spreading the virus at home. And then people go out and spread it to their friends within a km of their home. The lockdown is just killing small businesses.