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Israel told its citizens they could stop wearing masks indoors, ending one of its last main restrictions as new Covid-19 infections continued to wane even as vaccinations tapered off after a record rollout.
Children headed to school and adults to work without masks for the first time in more than a year. Israelis have not had to wear masks outdoors since April.
About 55% of Israel’s 9.3 million population are fully vaccinated – a turnout largely unchanged by this month’s expansion of eligibility to include 12- to 15-year-olds.
Michael Gove is on the UK media round this morning, and pretty much saying the same thing everywhere. He’s been pushing this line that 19 July is the new “terminus date” for ending restrictions in England, although with the events of the last couple of days, you’d be forgiven for thinking that roadmap had been as final_FINAL_revised_v2.doc.
Gove on 19 July: “That will be the terminus date.
“What we said is we won’t lift those restrictions before the 21 June – in there in the roadmap it says not before – and the whole point about the roadmap was to build in an element of flexibility and caution…
“It is regrettable that we do have this pause before moving to step four, but what we want to do is make sure that when we do make that move that we don’t go back…
“Because the worst thing for business, the worst thing for any of us, would be to open up again and then to very quickly find that we had to reimpose restrictions.”
