The Parliament in Israel voted on Thursday to extend the confinement until January 21 as well as new restrictions after an increase in cases of infections with the new coronavirus.
Read also: Covid-19: United Kingdom, Israel, Austria ... Which countries are re-defined?
Despite the confinement imposed on December 27 for two weeks, the third since the start of the epidemic, the number of infected people has started to rise again with more than 7,000 new cases daily in recent days.
According to a decision endorsed by the parliamentary committee on laws, confinement, initially scheduled until January 10, will be extended to January 21.
New restrictions also come into effect from Friday: schools, which had remained open, will close and the number of people allowed to go to work will be further reduced.
Other travel restrictions are imposed: only people who bought their plane ticket before January 7 will be able to leave Israel.
As of December 27, all non-essential businesses have been closed in Israel and public gatherings of more than ten people banned.
Israelis cannot travel more than 1,000 meters from their homes, except to go to the market, to the pharmacy or to work, if it is a profession considered essential.
A country of some nine million people, Israel has officially recorded more than 466,000 cases of infections, including about 3,527 deaths.
At the same time, the Israeli authorities are continuing a nationwide vaccination campaign launched on December 19.
Two million people will have received the double injection of the vaccine by the end of January in Israel, authorities say.
About 100,000 doses of the American company Moderna arrived in Israel on Thursday.
In the evening, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he had signed an agreement with the American company Pfizer to acquire enough doses that he believed could allow the entire Israeli population over 16 to be vaccinated by the end of March, according to a statement. .
"
Everyone must respect the confinement so that we can return to a (normal) life as quickly as possible
", he added.