Israel is cutting itself off from the world in the midst of the Covid-19 crisis.

As the pandemic progresses in the country, despite a massive vaccination campaign, the Hebrew state decided, Sunday, January 24, to suspend its international flights, to and from the country, from Monday at midnight for a period of one week.

Israel may have already vaccinated 2.5 of its nine million inhabitants in the last month, January saw the number of cases of contamination explode again due in particular to non-compliance, according to health authorities, with distancing measures physical by part of the population.

In the process, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday asked his cabinet to approve new strengthened health measures in a country where businesses deemed non-essential are already closed.

"We are sealing the skies, except for very rare exceptions, in order to prevent the entry of viral mutations, and also to ensure that we move quickly with our vaccination campaign," Benjamin Netanyahu told his ministers .

A few hours later, the Ministry of Health announced that it had detected a variant in five people with the coronavirus that appeared for the first time in Los Angeles (United States).

The British and South African variants are also present in Israel.

The new travel restriction measures will not apply to cargo flights, however, according to the health ministry. 

Also, people who have to go abroad for medical follow-up, do "essential work that cannot be done remotely", move or attend funerals with their families, will be allowed to travel, authorities said. without specifying for the moment how these travelers were going to be able to leave the country.

Already, travelers authorized to travel to Israel had since this weekend to present a negative test (72 hours or less) before taking the plane or to present proof that they have been vaccinated against Covid-19.

 Vaccination campaign extended to adolescents

In addition, Israel started this weekend to vaccinate adolescents against the coronavirus as part of its national campaign which has already covered more than a quarter of the population.

"Until now, I didn't want to be vaccinated, but I thought about it and thought that in the end it was better to be vaccinated because it would allow me to be closer to my family members" Dorone Bellaïche, 17, told AFP on Sunday after being vaccinated at a clinic in Jerusalem.

"Friends told me: 'don't get vaccinated, it's no use'. But I prefer not to listen to them," he added, saying instead that he wanted to follow the example of his mother who, she had already received the vaccine.

Israel has obtained a stock of vaccines from pharmaceutical giant Pfizer in exchange for the rapid sharing of data on the effects of this immunization on its population, under the terms of the agreement between the two parties made public.

In Israel, citizens are affiliated with one of the country's four major health insurance funds (HMOs).

However, each of its funds has large digital databases on their policyholders, which in theory allows them to judge the effectiveness or potential side effects of the vaccine, depending for example on the age or medical history of the patients.

With AFP

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