The Health Ministry reported Wednesday evening that 2,554 Israelis have tested positive for coronavirus out of 86,500 tests carried out since midnight in what appears to be Israel's largest single-day leap in cases since the beginning of the country's fifth wave of infections.
Nearly 3% of all tests results processed by 5:30pm returned positive — the highest such figure on record since September.
In addition, the ministry has also updated Tuesday's figures published in the morning hours, revising the number of confirmed cases up to 3,227, and not below 3,000 as initially reported.
Since the beginning of the week, 10,564 Israelis have tested positive for the virus.
Since Israel's rollout of the vaccine for children, the share of youths younger than 19 among total daily virus cases has dropped from over 50% to 36% as of Wednesday.
Meanwhile, the virus' reproduction number (R number) — which gauges how many new cases crop up as a result of a single infection — stood at 1.55, which indicates the spread of the outbreak is accelerating.
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Health worker carriers out coronavirus test on child at a testing center in Petah Tikva
(Photo: Yariv Katz)
Mounting cases notwithstanding, Israeli hospitals have yet to report a corresponding increase in coronavirus-related hospitalizations. As of Wednesday evening, hospitals were treating 147 COVID-19 patients, 89 of whom were in serious condition.
Of the gravely ill, 82% have not received a single vaccine dose.
Meanwhile, Israel may be facing an incoming influenza epidemic as hospitals reported treating 1,849 patients with complications of the disease over the past week, according to data published Wednesday by the Health Ministry's Center for Disease Control (CDC).
The Health Ministry has called on the general public from the age of six months and up to get vaccinated against the flu, hoping to avert a so-called "twindemic."