Israeli with coronavirus boarded flight to Tel Aviv without notifying crew

An Israeli passenger boarded a United Airlines flight to Israel on Thursday without notifying the crew that he was a confirmed COVID-19 carrier, law enforcement confirmed to The Times of Israel.

Thirty-eight other passengers had been on the largely empty UA90 flight from Newark that landed Friday morning and have been sent to a quarantine hotel in Jerusalem. The Home Front Command officers who greeted them at the hotel relayed that they would be tested twice during their mandatory two-week stay.

The passenger had been tested for the virus last week and flew to the US anyways. While there, he was notified that his results had come back positive. Nonetheless, he boarded the flight to return to Israel and only notified authorities at Ben Gurion Airport after landing, Channel 12 reported.

The plane was subsequently disinfected.

On April 12, the cabinet approved emergency ordinances requiring all people arriving in Israel from overseas to be housed at state-run quarantine hotels upon entry to the country. All arrivals will be housed there for 14 days to ensure they are not infected with the coronavirus.

The new action came after it became clear that incoming passengers to Israel were not all being quarantined despite Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s orders to do so earlier this month, and that arrivals on numerous flights were being allowed to enter the country and go home, sometimes via taxi, without being required to enter state-overseen quarantine or even having their temperatures checked.

However, the directive could not prevent actions such as the one taken by the Israeli UA90 passenger.