Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett on Sunday evening announced that Israel is preparing to change the criteria for COVID-19 tests in order to help manage the long lines at the testing centers, Israel Hayom reported.
Under the new guidelines, vaccinated individuals who are found to be positive for COVID-19 in official antigen tests will no longer need to undergo a follow-up PCR test.
In addition, vaccinated individuals who were exposed to a confirmed COVID-19 carrier will undergo an institutional antigen test. PCR tests will be performed for those who are symptomatic, for those who are over 60, and for at-risk populations who came in contact with a confirmed COVID-19 carrier.
Those vaccinated individuals who return from abroad will not need to undergo a coronavirus test on the third day after their arrival in Israel.
In the press conference, Bennett said, "If there are problems - and there are, such as the long lines for tests, which we are familiar with - then we deal with that. But the situation is one of an enormous number of confirmed cases, all at once, far beyond the reasonable capacity of the system. And so, we are right now preparing to change the criteria for tests, in order to quickly reduce the load."
Ester Admon, who chairs the Laboratory Workers' Union, told Israel Hayom, "The Health Ministry is in crisis because they were not organized, and the ones who will suffer are the citizens. Every person should protect his life."
"Logic would dictate that those who are symptomatic should do an antigen test, because it is more precise for them, and the chance of an incorrect result is higher for those who are asymptomatic."
She added, "Our capacity during the Delta wave was 200,000 tests. We've known about Omicron for two months - why did they not add manpower? There was time to make a logistics system, to enlist soldiers from the Home Front Command - this is shameful and an embarrassment. My gut feeling is that they gave up even before Omicron hit. The labs are our front-line soldiers and we could have prepared differently. If they did not turn to the labs and did not organize them ahead of time, it's as if they did not prepare the soldiers for war."