Travelers need more than the COVID-19 vaccine

Travelers need more than the COVID-19 vaccine

by
Israel is the only country that has something close to a so-called green passport. Next week, Israel plans to launch a documentation program on its citizens’ travel identification documents that shows the traveler has had two rounds of the COVID-19 vaccine.
For more stories from The Media Line, go to themedialine.org

Most other countries are requiring proof of a negative COVID-19 test for entry.

Salman Ahaliq, from Jalal travel agency in Bahrain, told The Media Line that coronavirus entry restrictions require travelers to have a negative COVID-19 test before entering. A representative of Deira Travel And Tourist Agency Co. LLC in the United Arab Emirates told The Media Line that his country requires “a negative COVID test, regardless of whether or not you got the vaccine”.

However, Mark Feldman, CEO of Ziontours, says that even with green passports, which he believes most countries will install as soon as they have enough vaccinated citizens, Israelis will still have to present a negative COVID-19 test to enter in countries like Bahrain and Cyprus.

“Even with a green passport, Israelis will still need a negative COVID-19 test to enter Bahrain, because we are still carriers even after we have received both vaccines. … I am still a carrier, although it is not affecting me, and I am going to your country, I could infect many people if I had COVID-19, ”he told The Media Line.

A green passport – meaning that a traveler does not need to be quarantined after the trip, is meant to be an incentive to travel, making it easier for travelers when they return to their home countries, Feldman explains.

“It is much more for … Israelis to travel abroad and not have to be quarantined here when they return. It will not have much effect if you go to Greece or New York, which requires a negative COVID-19 test ”to enter, said Feldman.

An Israeli Health Ministry spokesman told The Media Line: “Israelis who have received both doses of an approved vaccine, and from the 8th day after the second dose, will not be subject to mandatory quarantine when they return to Israel from abroad. “

When it comes to the fact that people come to Israel with green passports, Feldman says that Israel must first be concerned with granting access to foreigners in general.

“We may be ahead of the curve in immunizations, but we are long overdue with” permission for foreigners to enter the country, said Feldman. He added that health ministry officials are questioning whether tests for coronavirus carried out in other countries are reliable.

As a result, “Israel simply closes the heavens,” he said.

Feldman is not optimistic about the short-term outlook for Israel’s tourism industry.

“I don’t expect more than 50 percent of 2019 [tourism] numbers this year; I see a very warm recovery in the second half of ’21. I really think that in July and August, we will see hotels reaching 50% occupancy, but nothing like in the summer of 2019 ”, he said.

However, in countries like the United Arab Emirates, which had more tolerant policies with foreigners during the coronavirus crisis, travel experts are a little more optimistic about the prospects for tourism with the vaccine.

The United Arab Emirates is one of the countries that “started to receive visitors from all over the world, with restrictions, keeping the country one of the safest places to live, despite opening the country to the world”, Rose Dela Rosa, manager of AMR Travel and Tourism operations in Dubai, he told The Media Line. “In no time, the tourism industry in the United Arab Emirates will be among the first countries to fully recover from this pandemic, I believe that within a year.”

Source