Israel's Health Ministry on Thursday reported that France and Turkey are currently the world's most dangerous travel destinations in terms of the risk of infection with harmful variants of COVID-19, N12 reported.
While the full results of the Health Ministry report are not yet open to the public, N12 reported that around 0.5% of Israelis entering from France and 0.4% of those entering Israel from Turkey test positive for the coronavirus, both countries with high rates of dangerous coronavirus variants.
While the risk of infection for vaccinated individuals has shown to decrease substantially after vaccination, certain variants - most notably from South Africa - have been found to have mutated enough to decrease the vaccine's efficiency.
Evidence of this can be seen by the fact that the UK scored the lowest risk on the Health Ministry's list, with a 0.2% risk of infection. While the UK is home to highly infectious variant which originated on its shores, the variant has still shown to be just as susceptible to the vaccine as other common variants.
Also scoring low on the list, with 0.2% of Israelis returning to the country with coronavirus, is Germany, though chances of infection are classified higher than for those returning from the UK.
While the US risk of infection is not very high at 0.3%, the risk of returning from the States with vaccine-resistant variants is considered "very high," according to the N12 report.
Israelis returning from Russia returned a score similar to the US, with 0.3% of returnees testing positive, though the risk of mutation from the destination is currently unknown due to a lack of data.