Jerusalem: Israel’s Ministry of Health on Sunday said it decided to ban travel to ten more countries to prevent the spread of the Omicron variant of Covid-19.
The ban will take effect on Wednesday and will include the United States, Italy, Belgium, Germany, Hungary, Morocco, Portugal, Canada, Switzerland and Turkey, which will be labeled as red countries, Xinhua news agency reported citing the ministry.
The list of ed countries already includes most of the African countries, eight European countries and the United Arab Emirates.
All Israelis returning from the banned countries, including vaccinated and recovered ones, must enter quarantine for at least seven days.
Foreign nationals are not allowed to travel from these countries to Israel, except in humanitarian cases with the approval of a special governmental committee.
To date, the ministry has reported 134 cases of the Omicron variant, of which 86 are passengers who have recently returned from abroad.
Meanwhile, Iran has confirmed its first case of the Omicron COVID-19 variant, the health ministry said on Sunday, while authorities urged Iranians to get their booster doses in the Middle East’s worst-hit country. Deputy Health Minister Kamal Heidari told state TV that the infected person was a middle-age Iranian man who recently returned to Iran from the United Arab Emirates.
The necessary measures were taken to quarantine this person who lives in Tehran and those who were in contact with him, Heidari said. ‘This is the first case of Omicron (coronavirus) variant that has been identified in Iran. Coronavirus deaths have reached 131,083, the health ministry said, while infected cases rose by 1,968 in the past 24 hours to 6,170,979 in the Islamic Republic.
More than 50 million of Iran’s population of approximately 85 million have received two doses of coronavirus vaccine.