Israel, home to the harshest coronavirus bans on the planet, is now turning away non-Israelis arriving on flights from Italy. Israelis who have visited Italy will have to self-quarantine for 2 weeks.
Expect all flights between Italy and Israel to come to a halt.
Israel has now banned non-Israelis who have visited China, Hong Kong, Italy Japan, Macau, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, or Thailand in the past 2 weeks and quarantining Israelis who visited those countries.
- El Al has suspended service to:
- Milan through at least March 14th
- Naples through at least March 14th
- Rome through at least March 14th
- Venice through at least March 14th
- Bangkok through at least March 27th
- Beijing through at least May 2nd
- Hong Kong through at least May 2nd
I wrote on Sunday that Bangkok and Tokyo flights were in danger and now El Al has confirmed that new service to Tokyo that was scheduled to launch on March 11th will be postponed until at least April 4th.
Community spread of coronavirus seems inevitable for many countries at this point. With Israel advising its citizens to avoid all travel abroad, do you think Israel will eventually seal its borders and end all international flights?
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47 Comments On "Israel Bans Visitors From Italy; El Al Suspends All Flights To Italy And Thailand, Delays Their Japan Service Launch"
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Can someone explain why Israel is taking this virus to another level? It seems like Israel is the only country that’s really stepping up their game in protecting themselves. Not sure why but others aren’t nearly as concerned.
All countries are concerned given that 1 in 30 people with coronavirus have been dying.
But it’s not an easy decision to harm your economy by turning off flights, so many countries are hesitant to go that far.
Remains to be seen what the right approach is.
Where are you getting that 1-30 people are dying?
https://covid19info.live/
I second that. 1-30 dying? If death count is at 2800, infection rate should have been lower.
The math is not hard folks.
Confirmed cases: 82565
Deaths: 2810
82565/2810=1 death for every 29.4 cases.
Not saying this isn’t scary but outside of mainland China it’s more like 1 out of 60. And we still don’t know the specific age/health of many of the people who have died.
It can take 45-60 days to kill someone. For reference, the famous Dr Li Wenliang died about 42 days after becoming infected. Given that it just started spreading in other countries, it’s still way to early to say that 1/60 is the death rate.
Unfortunately most of the death cases are in China where they do not have the infrastructure to handle the virus, the rate in other countries is relatively better.
1 in 60 is not very reassuring.
Disagree. They are the MOST prepared than any other country. They build entire hospitals in 6 days. Overworked and overtaxed, yes. But as ugly as it is they are forcing quarantines and had curfews, shut down businesses and schools immediately, etc. Now compare to Iran and Italy…
Count progresses with each term. Confirmed cases, reported cases and global suspected cases. Terminology is key.
Many cases in China are not being reported or in the case of mild symptoms are being turned away from hospitals. As far as we know all deaths are being reported. Therefore the death rate is far far lower.
“As far as we know all deaths are being reported.” This is extreme naiveté. As far as we know, every other country believes that China has been falsifying their numbers or didn’t account for deaths of patients that couldn’t be/weren’t tested. China only had 2k test kits per day when there were tens of thousands waiting to be tested.
Still does not account for ‘in the case of mild symptoms are being turned away from hospitals’ point Eli raised.
The point is – no one knows the real numbers, even if China was trying to tell the truth. Epidemiologists that spend their whole studying these exact scenarios, take all these factors and a whole lot more into account, and are still estimating >2% CFR. I would be very interested to see any studies that corroborate your lack of concern. Until then I will remain cautious of the known and unknown risks of COVID19.
Spend studying these exact scenarios? Are you aware of anyone to have studied such a China scenario before this current one?
Yes, that’s what epidemiologists get paid to study their entire lives. They study previous epidemics and use the data to build models to predict how an epidemic may unfold. They measure the R0, demographics, incubation period, symptoms, unreported cases, and many other data points to help inform the public response (or the lack of needing one). It’s a not a one time thing, they constantly update their models to account for better/more data as it comes in. And it doesn’t end when the virus subsides. For example- the CFR for SARS actually increased by about 2% after it was all over. In that case they actually overestimated the unreported cases and therefore the CFR went up.
Such as this China manipulative scenario?
Exactly
Ignoring China the death rate is currently 1 in 60.
Either way, it’s not pretty and much worse than the flu.
the only way to prevent coronavirus is to close the borders entirely, if not eventually there will be someone how met someone how met someone that is still in their first 2 weeks and the virus and will spread the virus in the USA, it’s just a matter of time and we with all our kids will be locked up in our houses for 2 weeks
USA closed the border to china because they don’t want it to spread, the only way to keep it from spreading is to close off the border entirely except for those that quarantine themselves for 2 weeks
Dan,
Would you fly to Eastern Europe over the next week?
Once you’re blocking Italy, how’s the rest of Europe. And how can anyone know if someone flying in from Zurich, Paris etc. hasn’t just been in Italy
Agree. What about the opposite, passengers from North America who only connected in Italy?
It does not apply to connecting flights if you are for example flying from nyc to tlv with a stopover in rome you will be allowed entry to Israel. This is great news for Pesach travelers as many fly Alitalia after the Zman is over. This is according to Alitalia’s website
https://www.alitalia.com/en_us/fly-alitalia/news-and-activities/news/info-flights.html
Remains to be seen if they will continue to operate the flight solely based on connecting passengers. Or if Israel will allow the Italy based crew to enter Israel.
Stay tuned…
This link does not discuss flights from the US to Israel which connect through Italy. The only subject in the link is people who are flying from China.
Have some matzah at home on hand in case you don’t make it to Israel, that’s all I can say.
Not exactly. My husband arrived to Israel today; Alitalia JFK-TLV via MCO. It took close to 3 hours to get out of the airport despite half his flight being empty. First they only allowed Israelis to deplane and were told they’d be self-quarantined. A second bus came for the passengers of various nationalities who had only been transferring and hadn’t gone out of the airport – and they asked a lot of questions! The Italians were told to remain on the plane – don’t know what happened with them.
Not sure if you want to be on a 8 hour (or so) flight from Italy to NYC oe Italy to TLV or vice versa together with many people that are returning from a stay in Italy…
And although this is not the case yet, but you can’t be sure how the Israeli health ministry will handle those passengers i the future either, especially if lets say a new case is confirmed by a passenger of a flight of that type although the person has not visited Italy at all.
Can anyone post a HELPFUL comment to this:
For Pesach I bought 4 legs of a ticket
NYC to Rome on Norwegian with a 4 day stop over to tour.
Rome to TLV on RyanAir.
TLV to ATH Aegan Air
ATH to NYC (2 night stop over to tour) Norwegian
It’s crazy, but it ended up being $600 less a person than flying direct outside of the Eastern European airlines.
All bought w/ Chase Reserve. No extra insurance bought at the time of purchase. Can someone give me a helpful course of action. Would you do a wait and see? Would you call Norwegian or Ryan Air first for credit? I figure Ryan Air flight will most likely get cancelled.
nice! (if not for Corona…)
Pesach is about 5-6 weeks away, a whole lot can change in that time frame. It’s too early to tell.
I’d ask for a refund today. Try to look for direct flights or spend Pesach at home this year
Interested to see what will happen with merkos shlichus for pesach
Are the Alitalia flights from Rome to Italy being canceled? I have a flight from NYC after Pesach with a stopover in Italy
Too far in the future to know what will happen.
Are prices for tickets going to fall?
Dan, what are the chances that Israel will close all borders? Would they give advanced notice so people can leave if necessary?
I doubt the problem is leaving, the problem is only coming in. You can always leave through Gaza….
Is there any value in not buying things online (Amazon) that are being shipped directly from China?
Dan can you please post about ordering things on amazon that ship from China?? I order through Amazon prime so I guess most things ship from a warehouse in the US, but can you please clarify about this.
I don’t blame Israel.
With guys needing to daven with 3 minyamin daily, quarantining whole neighborhoods might not work so well, especially if you don’t feel too sick.
So better to do whatever you can to avoid the virus in the first place, then to try to deal with it later.
Is the land border still open with Jordan? The real problem in the neighborhood is that Iran can’t be trusted to tell the truth about infections and deaths. The virus has already spread from Iran to Iraq. If the refugee camps in Syria become contagious, a pandemic is guaranteed in Israel’s back yard. Israeli political leaders may be talking about Europe and the Far East, but their major concerns are elsewhere.
Interesting: https://www.jpost.com/HEALTH-SCIENCE/Israeli-scientists-In-three-weeks-we-will-have-coronavirus-vaccine-619101
Would be cool if a company in the West Bank develops a vaccine and the UN says not to use it…