Israel has confirmed its second case of the highly mutated Omicron coronavirus variant, the Health Ministry announced Sunday evening.
According to the ministry, the new strain has been detected in a woman from the central city of Ra'anana who has recently returned from a trip to South Africa.
The country reported its first case of the Omicron strain Friday morning in a foreign worker arriving from Malawi, a southeastern African country that then has not yet reported any cases of the variant, which has been classified as a "variant of concern" by the World Health Organization and is believed to be more transmissible and better adept at evading vaccine protection that its predecessors
Both patients and another man suspected to be carrying the virus have been sent to self-isolate in a designated quarantine hotel in Jerusalem.
Earlier on Sunday, the ministry reported that 14 people in Israel are suspected to be carrying the new bug, five of whom have tested positive overnight Sunday.
Out of the eight travelers who have tested positive beforehand, two were fully vaccinated with three doses of Pfizer/BioNTech's COVID-19 vaccine and another two have received the Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca vaccines over the last six months.
Three travelers, including the country's first confirmed Omicron patient, returned from southern Africa, another two returned from Jordan and the United Arab Emirates and the three others did not travel abroad at all latley.
Meanwhile, the Health Ministry reported that 276 Israelis have tested positive for coronavirus out of some 38,500 tests carried out since midnight, putting the country's infection rate at 0.75%.
Israeli hospitals were treating 161 COVID-19 patients, 125 of whom were in serious condition. Of the gravely ill, 72 patients were connected to ventilators.
Since the onset of the pandemic in Israel, 8,189 people have succumbed to complications of COVID-19, 75 of whom passed away in November alone.