Israel’s Health Ministry has announced that the last remaining COVID regulation, the requirement to wear masks indoors, will be dropped as of June 15th, in just nine-days.

The announcement was made by Health Minister Yuli Edelstein and came upon the heels of Israel’s first day with 0 new cases of Corona being reported over the course of a full day. That feat happened on Saturday and marked the first time that such an occurrence took place since the pandemic began last March and is the case even though the entire economy has been reopened.

“In light of the prolonged low morbidity, I would like to announce here that consulting with Health Ministry’s senior officials, with the approval of Prof. Chezy Levy, we decided that if the morbidity remains low until June 15, we will allow masks to be removed even indoors,” said Edelstein. The announcement was made as part of a special ceremony that was held on Sunday night at the Jerusalem Theater to honor health system staff and volunteers for their work fighting the pandemic over the past 16 months.

“This is a reality we did not expect to reach at this point, but we made it.”

The four confirmed cases of the virus on Shabbos were all from people who arrived from abroad. While traveling is still far from the pre-pandemic levels, several thousand people arrive in Israel every day, mostly through Ben-Gurion Airport and the virus is still not spreading in Israel.

People who enter the country are required to test upon arrival, and if they are not vaccinated or recovered, can take another test to shorten the mandatory quarantine from two weeks to 10 days.

Active cases in the country also continued to drop over the weekend as there were only 230 reported active cases in the country as of Sunday morning.

In addition, only 37 patients are in serious condition.

“What is amazing about these numbers is the fact that they are plummeting while the economy is fully operational,” Edelstein said.

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)