Israel on Sunday opted to close its borders to foreign tourists and re-authorise the highly criticised cellphone tracking programme in a bid to stop the spread of the newly discovered Omicron variant of the coronavirus.
In a statement on Sunday, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s office explained that the measure would take effect from Sunday evening. It said; ‘The entry of foreign nationals into Israel is banned except for cases approved by a special committee’.
Africa Daily News, New York gathered that what this means is that Israeli citizens will be required to present a negative PCR test and quarantine themselves for three days if they have been vaccinated against the coronavirus and seven days if they have not.
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It was only four weeks ago that Israel reopened its borders to foreign tourists after a prolonged closure due to Covid.
The measure were decided by a cabinet committee tasked with overseeing Israel’s Covid response.
Bennett’s government has also re-activated a controversial programme initiated under his predecessor Benjamin Netanyahu early in the pandemic that allows the powerful Shin Bet internal security agency to track cellphones as a viral containment measure.
Tracking ‘will be in order to locate verified (Omicron) cases and thereby cut the chains of infection,’ Bennett’s office said, adding the programme will take effect on Thursday.
The tracking ‘is restricted only to verified cases of the new strain.
‘There will be no widespread and sweeping use for all verified cases as was done in previous waves,‘ it added, stressing the Shin Bet will also not monitor quarantine violations.
The Shin Bet tracking programme faced legal challenges from civil liberties groups after its introduction last year, before it was halted.
It already imposed a series of emergency measures late Friday to protect its heavily vaccinated population after identifying a case of the new Covid-19 variant.
The health ministry said the new strain that was first detected by South Africa was discovered in a person who had arrived from Malawi.
AFRICA DAILY NEWS, NEW YORK
