Israelis remained silent on Sunday after the order to wear masks outdoors was withdrawn in another step towards relative normality, thanks to the country’s mass vaccination against COVID-19.
With approximately 81% of citizens or residents over the age of 16 – the age group eligible for the Pfizer / BioNTech (PFE.N), (22UAy.DE) vaccination in Israel – receiving both doses, infections and hospitalizations.
But access by foreigners is still limited and non-immune Israelis returning from abroad must isolate themselves because virus variants can challenge the vaccine. read more The Ministry of Health has said it has tracked down seven cases of a new Indian variant in Israel whose potential is being assessed.
“We are currently leading the world when it comes to the coronavirus,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told reporters. “(But) we are not done with the coronavirus yet. It may return.”
The police-forced wearing of protective masks in the open air, which was ordered a year ago for non-activities, has been scrapped. But the Ministry of Health said the requirement still applies to indoor public spaces, urging citizens to keep masks on hand.
“Free breathing”, reads the headline of the daily Israel Hayom.
“Being without a mask for the first time in a long time feels strange. But it’s very strange,” said Amitai Hallgarten, 19, as he sank into a park. “If I have to be masked indoors to deal with this, I’ll do everything I can.”
With Israeli kindergarten, elementary, and high school students already in class, high school students who were kept at home or attended class sporadically returned to pre-pandemic schedules.
Teachers were instructed to continue ventilating classrooms and to maintain social distance in lessons and breaks. Extracurricular activities such as children’s theaters remain off limits.
“It is still a non-vaccinated population (children under the age of 16) that we want to protect,” Health Ministry Sharon Alroy-Preis told Israel’s Army radio.
Israel counts East Jerusalem Palestinians among its 9.3 million inhabitants and administered the vaccines there.
The 5.2 million Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and the Hamas-controlled Islamic Gaza Strip have received limited supplies of vaccines through Israel, Russia, the United Arab Emirates, the global COVAX vaccine scheme and China.
Our standards: the principles of the Thomson Reuters Trust.