Jerusalem | Israel on Tuesday opened the Taba crossing point, closed since the start of the pandemic, to allow Israelis to travel to Egyptian Sinai on the occasion of the Jewish Passover holiday.
The Israel Airports Authority said Monday that from Tuesday until April 12, 300 people vaccinated or cured of COVID-19 could use, but only on foot, the Taba terminal to reach Sinai.
She clarified that a negative PCR test of less than 72 hours would be required for anyone wishing to cross the border in both directions.
Many Israelis travel to the Egyptian peninsula every year during the Passover (Passover) holidays. But the terminal had been closed since March 2020 due to the pandemic, airport authority spokesman Ofer Lefler told AFP.
Israel has been recording a decline in the COVID-19 pandemic for several weeks, thanks in particular to a vast vaccination campaign that began on December 19.
And the country of 9.2 million inhabitants, more than half of the population of which received two doses of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines, gradually emerged from its third lockdown in early February.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has struck a deal with the US pharmaceutical giant allowing Israel to quickly obtain millions of doses of the Covid-19 vaccine in exchange for biomedical data on its effects.
Since then, the rate of contamination of the population has steadily declined. It stood at 1.2% on Monday, against nearly 6% at the end of February, according to the Ministry of Health.
Since the start of the pandemic, 6,194 infected Israelis have died, out of a total of more than 832,000 sick. There were 467 patients in serious condition Monday against more than 800 at the end of February.