Israel has banned all foreigners from entering the country and tasked intelligence services with locating and tracking all recent arrivals from the hotspots of the newly-emerged Omicron coronavirus variant.
The new rules are set to go into effect on Sunday, making Israel the first country to completely seal its borders to foreign nationals for at least 14 days, following an emergency meeting of the Corona Cabinet. Only those specifically approved by a so-called Exceptions Committee will be allowed entry.
“The Government of Israel is working quickly and vigorously thanks to the conclusions that were formulated following the ‘Omega’ national drill which gamed various situations regarding the appearance of new variants,” Prime Minister Naftali Bennett noted, referring to a national drill conducted just two weeks ago to assess Israel’s preparedness for an outbreak of a potential unknown new strain of Covid-19.
All Israeli citizens returning from abroad – even those fully-vaccinated with two doses and a booster – will be forced to quarantine for at least three days, while those coming from “red” states will have to stay in designated military-run hotels until they test negative for the virus twice.
Those who had visited an African state over the past week were urged to undergo a test and isolated voluntarily, while internal security agency Shin Bet was tasked with monitoring the compliance using its cell phone tracking capabilities.
The controversial contact-tracing program was first used during the outbreak of the original Covid-19 virus back in 2020, but has since been ruled “no longer justifiable” by the High Court of Justice.
The harsh measures come after Israel detected a single confirmed and seven suspected cases of the new variant B.1.1.529, first registered earlier this month in Botswana. During an emergency meeting on Friday, the World Health Organization (WHO) officially designated the new strain a “variant of concern,” calling it Omicron.
Growing fears of the Omicron variant promptly triggered global travel bans, with flights from South Africa and several of its neighboring countries being barred by a growing number of states. While little is known about the variant thus far, experts worldwide have already raised the alarm over its multiple mutations and potential for infection. The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control designated the strain as presenting a “high to very high” risk, adding that there was “considerable uncertainty related to the transmissibility, vaccine effectiveness, risk for reinfections and other properties of the Omicron variant.”
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Further mutations of the Covid-19 virus could spawn a strain as contagious as the Delta variant and as deadly as the Ebola virus. That’s the stark warning from the World Medical Association.
Frank Ulrich Montgomery, chairman of the global physicians’ society (WMA), shared his fears with Germany’s Funke media group’s newspapers on Saturday. He stressed the importance of not “giving the virus a chance” to mutate any further. To achieve this, it may be necessary to keep “vaccinating the world for years” to come, Montgomery said.
The Ebola virus, whose horrific effects on humans could be matched by a new covid strain just as the WMA chairman warns, was first discovered back in 1976 in South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The deadliest outbreak to date occurred in West Africa between 2014 and 2016, claiming more than 11,000 lives. The disease brought on by the virus causes a severe fever and internal bleeding, with the average fatality rate being around 50%, according to the World Health Organization. Some of the known strains, however, have led to death in a terrifying 90% of all cases.
When asked about the situation in his homeland, Germany, Montgomery warned that the number of Covid infections is likely to double in the coming ten days. He also called for the introduction of stricter measures in the country, urging authorities to close all Christmas markets and to ban festivities, as well as fireworks. And, should the fourth wave of Covid still not let up, nationwide business closures and lockdowns may be necessary, the scientist forecast. Any measures taken now will only have a tangible effect in two weeks’ time and, along with the vaccination campaign, the delay could be as long as six weeks, he pointed out.
The bleak predictions come hard on the heels of the discovery of the new Omicron strain in southern Africa. On Friday, the Word Health Organization formally designated Omicron a “variant of concern.” While scientists are still studying the novel strain, fears have already been voiced that the heavily mutated Covid variant could be more contagious than its predecessors.
