Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, along with Transportation Minister Miri Regev and Health Minister Yuli Edelstein, today (Monday, 9 November 2020), visited the new coronavirus lab at Ben-Gurion International Airport.

 

Prime Minister Netanyahu:

 

"I am here with the Health Minister and the Transportation Minister on a visit to Ben-Gurion International Airport. We are here with an innovative testing system, with an innovative lab at the airport, in order to allow for rapid tests of outbound and inbound passengers. This can help us get back to a better, quicker and more efficient aviation routine.

 

“I am certainly impressed by the great effort that is being made here, and you will yet do more and more. More efficient, safer and quicker – because we want to renew Israel's link to the world.

 

“Our economic situation, as opposed to the world's, is good. We want it to be better and we know that we need to keep the rules. I see that you are doing so here, and I will also do this, there, to wear a mask always."

 

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"Here I would also like to thank Prof. Grotto and all of the Health Ministry, Transportation Ministry and Airports Authority personnel.

 

“We succeeded in lowering morbidity from one of the highest rates in the world, if not the highest, to one of the lowest rates in the West, if not the lowest, and we want to keep to it. We succeeded in doing this because we did it together. This was not easy.

 

“Now we want to exit. We exited from the first stage to the second stage. Morbidity is starting to go up; therefore, we will decide tomorrow or the day after about the third stage. If the indicators do not improve, we will not enter the third stage. Together we will take the steps that will ensure that morbidity does not increase, because if it does, it will go up like a jet or missile taking off for the heavens. This destroys the economy, and it exacts a tremendous price in lives and the health of the people. Therefore, I request your cooperation.

 

“The Health Minister was correct when he said that nobody wants to be a sucker, nobody wants to be a victim of a minority that is violating and causing suffering and imprisonment of others. Therefore, I ask that you all be strict about wearing masks and demand that others do so as well. Demand it of others. I am here, not as Prime Minister, but as a citizen. I just saw someone here, one of the people, good people, but the mask was a little bit under the nose. I told him 'Pull it up over your nose'. Be strict about your masks. Regard every person – there is no choice but to say this – as if they were a possible carrier of the virus, and if both of you wear masks, there is no pandemic, there is no coronavirus. It is that simple."