A woman casts her vote at a drive-in polling station which is made for people on quarantine or tested positive for COVID-19 during the Israeli parliamentary election. Photo: DPA / Picture Alliance

i24 News – Due to the coronavirus pandemic, Israel has set up polling stations across the country in COVID-19 wards on Tuesday, allowing patients to vote in the country’s fourth election in two years.

“This is the first time that we have to make this kind of arrangements for an election but we are rising to the challenge,” David Ratner, spokesman for Rambam Medical Center in Haifa, told The Times of Israel.

An election official will put on a Hazmat protective suit and collect the patients’ ballots from 8 am to 7 pm. There are 409 polling stations for people who have tested positive for COVID-19, including nearly 40 in coronavirus wards.

For those who are sick or quarantined at home, a total of 342 drive-through facilities have been set up so that they can exercise their right to vote. These people must go to a center reserved for them, in their vehicle and hand in their ballot.

In Israel there are around 40,000 people currently in quarantine.

For the rest of citizens, polling stations opened at 7 am this morning and will remain open until 10 pm.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is again facing an electorate of some 6.5 million registered voters, after leading a successful coronavirus vaccination effort that has already fully inoculated half of Israel’s roughly nine million people.