No plans to close airport, officials say, amid fear of renewed COVID spike

Israeli officials are clarifying that a high-level discussion held earlier in the day on closing Ben Gurion Airport in the case of a renewed virus outbreak does not mean that officials are actually planning on curbing flights in and out of the country anytime soon.

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Health Minister Niztan Horowitz met with the head of Israel’s Health Maintenance Organizations to discuss a new vaccine drive set to target Israel’s elderly, and to plan for the possibility of a more severe COVID variant hitting Israel in the future.

However, talk of closing the airport during the meeting, which coincided with rising Omicron infection rates and the discovery of a new subvariant in the country, led some to believe such a move could soon be in the offing.

“The prime minister wanted to make sure Israel is prepared in case of a very dangerous variant, in terms of equipment and regarding closing the skies. This is not the current situation, just a what if,” Sigal Regev Rosenberg, head of the Meuhedet HMO, tells Army Radio.

Coronavirus czar Salman Zarka tells Channel 13 that the BA.2 variant is swiftly spreading and the number of new daily infections could double to 30,000 within a week.

But he says there are no plans to impose rules that would keep families from spending Passover together next month.

“There’s no reason to mark the holiday on Zoom, we’re not there anymore. We’ll celebrate together, without it ending with illnesses,” Zarka tells Kan.