Israel’s Health Ministry has denied a report broadcast Tuesday by the Kan public radio network in which the head of the infectious diseases unit at Assuta Hospital in Ashdod said Israel is considering a 14-day quarantine for all US citizens arriving in Israel.
Dr. Tal Brosh, a consultant to Israel’s Health Ministry, said in the interview that such a quarantine is “in discussion, of course,” among officials and said that he would recommend it, “but let’s complete the discussions first.”
Israel’s Health Ministry responded with a vigorous denial, published in The Jerusalem Post. “It is not currently on the agenda,” a ministry spokesperson said.
Nevertheless, Brosh said during the interview that testing all travelers who enter Israel for coronavirus would be untenable and for that matter, unhelpful because number of travelers make it impossible. In addition, many people who come down with the virus show no symptoms and test negative at the start, and only test positive days or even a week later.
Short of closing the border, there is no guarantee that Israel can stop the virus from entering the country, Brosh said – a contention that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu raised at the very start of the global epidemic when he first established the coronavirus task force.