The Israeli company ElAl inaugurated on Monday evening, March 8, a flight with passengers who all had to prove their health status, in particular by performing an antigen test before check-in, if they were not vaccinated or cured of Covid-19 .
Passengers on flight LY003 to New York will be required to undergo an antigen test at Ben-Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv before check-in, ElAl said earlier in a statement.
Read also: Covid-19: with the green passport, Israel is gradually coming back to life
"A passenger whose antigen test is positive will not be allowed to continue flight registration
,
"
explains the airline, which also requires all passengers to take a PCR screening test to board planes.
The virus has plunged the airline sector into a historic crisis and this
"test flight"
is part of a system set up with the Sheba medical center, near Tel Aviv, aimed at
"restoring regular flights and ensuring the health of passengers ”
.
1,000 travelers per day
Ben-Gurion airport - closed since the end of January except for cargo flights and special flights allowing a maximum of 200 people to return to the country per day -, saw its reception capacity increase Sunday to 1,000 travelers per day in from New York, Frankfurt, Paris, London, Kiev, Toronto and Hong Kong, thanks to new deconfinement measures a fortnight of new national elections.
That number is expected to rise to 3,000 by midweek.
"Our project means that above all, we bring the Israelis back for the elections since it is a fundamental right to be able to vote in a democratic state
,
"
Israeli Transport Minister Miri Regev said on Monday, visiting the airport.
The vaccination campaign, which began on December 19, brought down the number of contaminations, which fell from a peak of 10,000 per day in mid-January to around 3,600 per day last week.
And the country which records about 804,500 infected people including 5,915 deaths has gradually emerged from its third confinement in early February.
Despite this deconfinement, public health officials remain cautious, especially as the number of people getting vaccinated is starting to level off and variants of the virus continue to circulate.
Read also: Israel, world champion in vaccination against Covid
Some 40% of the nine million Israelis received their two doses of the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine which is rapidly supplying the country in exchange for biomedical data on the treatment's effect.
And on Monday, the Hebrew state passed the five million mark who received their first dose, with the administration of a vaccine on an Israeli woman in Tel Aviv, to the applause of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Minister of Health, Yuli Edelstein.
