Israel Drops Mask Requirement for Most Indoor Venues as COVID-19 Cases Continue to Fall

As of midnight on Monday, Israel dropped the requirement for the most part to wear facial masks indoors. Israel's Health Ministry announcement ended one of the last major COVID-19 restrictions still in force in Israel, as daily cases in Israel are near zero.

Face coverings will still be mandatory for those who are not vaccinated and work in welfare institutions, long-term care facilities or elderly homes as well as people who are going into quarantine and passengers on airplanes.  Schools were not mentioned in the announcement.

Israelis have been masked indoors in public places for more than a year and outdoors for much of that time (except while exercising) as a preventative measure against COVID-19.  Though the restrictions had been extremely stringent with fines for non-compliance, there’s been a relaxing, in practice, of wearing masks for several months now.

On Sunday, in the Knesset during the swearing-in ceremony for the new government of Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was the only MK to don a mask.

Israel mounted a massive vaccination campaign six months ago and has fully vaccinated more than half the population. It began vaccinating 12-15-year-olds earlier this month.

At the height of the crisis, Israel had some 8,600 new cases a day.  That’s dropped to just 19 on Sunday.  On Monday, there were 212 active cases with 29 people in serious condition.

Israel launched a pilot program at the end of May to open up for tourism to the country, allowing only vaccinated tourists in 20 groups of up to 20 visitors.  So far, that has been successful, and Israel will now allow another 1,000 tourists in groups until the end of June. After that Israel has announced it will open up to individual, vaccinated tourists.