JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel on Thursday ended the “green passport”, the local health pass, the ebb of the wave of contamination by the Omicron variant of the coronavirus allowing a new reduction in measures to fight the epidemic of COVID-19. 19.
The abolition of the “green passport” was announced Thursday by Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, during a meeting on the health situation.
“The wave has been broken,” he said at the opening of this meeting.
Naftali Bennett, however, clarified that parents should continue to test their children twice a week and that a negative screening test would remain essential to visit people staying in retirement homes.
Since February 4, this “green passport” was only required to access places and events presenting a high risk of contamination, such as nightclubs or party rooms. Cafés, restaurants, bars, sports halls or hotels no longer condition their access to the presentation of this past.
Some specialists then criticized the choice of the Israeli government to ease the restrictions rather than take additional measures to slow the spread of the Omicron variant.
The wave of contamination fueled by the Omicron variant of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, which is particularly contagious, reached its peak at the end of January in Israel, with 85,000 new infections recorded each day at that time. The number of daily contaminations has continued to decline since then and stood at around 21,000 cases on Wednesday.
As in most countries, while the Omicron variant has caused fewer severe forms of COVID-19 overall than the previous strains of the coronavirus, its high contagiousness has fueled an outbreak of cases whose magnitude has put pressure on the health system. local.
A pioneer in vaccination against COVID-19, Israel has recorded more than 9,700 deaths and nearly 3.5 million contaminations since the start of the pandemic, out of a population of 9.4 inhabitants.
(Report Maayan Lubell, French version Sophie Louet and Myriam Rivet, said by)