Israeli ministers have decided to ban travel to the U.S. and Canada amid Omicron spread globally. The newest mutation of COVID-19 has resulted in the new Omicron variant, which has many countries such as Israel nervous about the state of affairs.
The office of Israel’s Prime Minister Naftali Bennett announced the decision on Monday, after a Cabinet vote took the decision. The U.S. and Israel have diplomatic relations with many trade operations amongst them, but this rare move might make things take a turn unprecedented previously.
The list of countries that Israel has decided to ban include several European countries along with other destinations, to which people from Israel cannot travel to and those traveling from will have to follow strict testing and quarantine.
Most recently, Israel saw several rapidly increasing cases of the Omicron variant among its citizens. The decision to restrict travel and ban a few particular countries was followed due to the high transmissibility rate of this particular COVID variant.
Belgium, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Morocco, Portugal, Switzerland and Turkey are all part of the list that Israel has banned apart from Canada and the U.S. in particular. The decision to ban particular countries is also a result of the country’s own ties of trade to these countries in particular. Countries that have found the new variant are prone to spread the virus to other countries through travel and tourism, which is why the strict measures to prevent it.
