Israel removes all COVID-19 travel bans; scrapes its red list

Israel’s Ministry of Health on Thursday announced the scrapping of its red list of destinations with high COVID-19 cases. The Ministry's Director General, Prof. Nachman Ash, said that COVID-19 travel restrictions on all countries have been lifted.

The Ministry's decision is a result of the government policy, which says that the "red" nation list will be suspended as the number of people tested positive for COVID-19 upon arrival has gone below 5% of total patients in Israel.Israel will now allow travel to and from nations that were still on its red list. These countries were the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, South Africa, Portugal, the United Arab Emirates, Ethiopia, Tanzania, France, Turkey, Mexico, Hungary, Switzerland, Spain, and Nigeria.
As per the recent data, Israel will go through a surge and soon record 50000 COVID-19 cases per day. Ash said that though the number of hospitalisations are increasing, it has been noted that the number of critically ill patients connected to ventilators remains stable.

The former "red" countries have been moved to Israel's "orange” list, which is a collection of nations to which the Health Ministry recommends against unnecessary travel due to high cases of virus.
According to the Health Ministry, all vaccinated or recovered people from these orange nations must quarantine for 24 hours upon arrival in Israel or until they get a negative test report. On the other hand, unvaccinated travellers must get two negative tests: one upon arrival, and one after seven days of quarantine.