On Sunday, previous green passport certificates issued to the recipients of the second dose of the covid vaccine will be revoked and the new certificates issued to recipients of the third booster dose will take effect. This change in policy raises serious concerns among small business owners, who optimistically thought that the days of economic uncertainty were over. "We'll have to be policemen again telling their customers not to come in". There is serious concern that this would hurt their revenues and worried about another wave of economic uncertainty.
Ronen Sasson, owner of the first-person gym in Tel Aviv, said that preparing the business for enforcing the green passport rule requires a lot of resources. "In terms of actual work, any such procedure is very time-consuming and very difficult. Having to start scanning documents again and re-entering all of the information into our database for all of our customers."
Sasson added that the business in its current state is at 65% of subscriber occupancy compared to the days before the corona and that from Sunday the percentages will have dropped further. According to him, another obstacle is the employees of the institute themselves, who are not interested in getting vaccinated at all or in the third dose.
"On Sunday I will just have to not let in the people who will not show me a vaccine certificate. I have no choice. We also had to return money to customers who were not vaccinated. I did not want to argue with them. We just explained to customers you want to be angry? Not us.
Dudu Lugassi, the owner and chef of La Pastria restaurant in Netivot, said the move would hurt the industry. "The green passport of the third vaccine will severely hurt restaurant owners. Far fewer customers will come and of course, this will cause heavy economic damage. Another solution must be found," Logsi stressed.
"Now it will also not be possible to seat second vaccine holders in outdoor seating as well," he continued. "People just will not be imported and we will have very heavy losses. Corona has already hit restaurants extremely hard, now it will be much more difficult and will cause greater economic damage."
