About 35 Chinese citizens who arrived in Israel over the weekend on a flight from Moscow were denied entry and sent back to Russia on a return flight.
However, the saga didn’t end there as the Israelis on the flight panicked at the sight of the Chinese passengers wearing face masks and tried to leave the plane, a Ynet report said. Due to the commotion, the flight was significantly delayed.
Interior Minister Aryeh Deri banned all foreign nationals who have recently been in China from entering Israel by plane or boat as international fear of the quickly spreading coronavirus continues to grow.
China announced on Saturday that another 49 people have died from the virus, bringing the death count to a total of 250. A total of 11,971 people have been infected with the virus.
“In the last two days, we stopped flights from China to Israel,” Moshe Bar Siman-Tov, Director General of Israel’s Ministry of Health said. “The Health Minister was the first to take this step and other countries followed in his footsteps. We have closed the crossings and we are working to ensure that whoever has been in China in the last 14 days will not enter Israel or will be isolated.”
(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)
Join the official YWN WhatsApp status
One Response
Since the PRC no longer stamps passport, how would immigration officials know whether someone arriving in EY from the U.S. or Europe know whether that individual had been to China in the past 2 prior to flying on to a connecting airport in Europe or the U.S.?