Israel's Covid testing centers collapse as cases soar; Health Min. calls for reduction of tests
Meanwhile, the skies are set to reopen as flight bans ease
Israeli media are reporting that the country’s COVID testing centers are collapsing under the weight of too many people waiting in line for too few tests—with one government advisor and professor from the prestigious Weizmann Institute predicting 20,000 cases a day within a matter of days.
Meanwhile, Israel’s Minister of Health Nitzan Horowitz has called for fewer people to be tested…a tightening of the criteria for testing eligibility may outwardly seem to be due to the limited capacity of testing centers in Israel, but there’s more to it than that: just look to the skies!
The scene of congested testing centers in Tel Aviv, Herzliya and elsewhere around the densely populated country contrasts with largely empty skies above it, international air traffic having ground to a halt since late November when the Israeli authorities closed the borders to non-citizens. Vaccinated Israelis must now isolate for three days upon their return but Tourism Minister Yoel Rezbozov has just slammed that measure as “no longer having medical value.” Expect the requirement to be scrapped shortly and other failing measures to follow.
Rewind to six months ago when non-vaccinated Israelis had to endure a 14-day quarantine upon arrival in the country, a timeframe later reduced to seven days. When Israelis aren’t boasting about they invented hummus (did they? does anyone care?) they are busy flouting whatever rules may come their way, and there is a growing realization that the explosion of the Omicron variant has less to with vacationers coming home than to community spread.
Israelis are also, it must be said, poor performers when it comes to avoiding overcrowding. That’s partly due to what happens when you cram 9.5 million people into an area the size of New Jersey, but also a consequence of poor or non-existent urban planning and a herd mentality. Which might be good for herd immunity in the long run, but is roiling daily life for a lot of people right now.
I would argue that instead of the endless chest-thumping in the media all these months about how Israel is the most vaxxed nation in the world, yadda yadda yadda, that the relevant officials spent more time coming up with a more sensible game plan for difficult chapters of the pandemic that weren’t hard to predict.
Similar scenes of overcongestion at testing centers are playing out elsewhere too, of course—in Athens, New York City…let’s call this unfortunate phenomenon what it is, a slow-motion panic. One that risks creating more problems than it was meant to solve, so here’s a little note to Jerusalem: easy on the vax brags because Knesset cockiness is largely to blame for letting things get to this point.
Not international air travelers.