The Health Ministry reported on Thursday that coronavirus cases continued to rise and that the pandemic's R-number, which indicates the spread of the virus within the community, stood at 0.92 and is expected to exceed 1 before the end of the month.
According to the ministry, 6,738 new cases of COVID-19 were confirmed on the previous day out of 56,488 tests conducted, marking an 11.93% positivity rate, up one percent for a day prior. One in eight people tested has received a positive result.
There are currently 332 Israeli COVID-19 patients hospitalized in serious condition, up slightly from last week's figures. Of the gravely ill, 149 were connected to ventilators.
Since the start of the pandemic, 10,405 people succumbed to the virus, 15 of them over the past week and 161 since the beginning of the month.
There are over 40,000 active COVID-19 patients in Israel as of Thursday, most of them displaying mild symptoms only. Tel Aviv was home to the largest number of active coronavirus cases with 3,313 such instances, followed by Jerusalem with 1,864.
Despite increasing alarm about another morbidity wave, Israelis were in no hurry to get vaccinated while the government was also reluctant to consider employing new health measures.
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Medical staff in a coronavirus ward at the Rambam Health Care Campus, in February
(Photo: Gil Nechushtan)
Prime Minister Naftali Bennett met with Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz on Wednesday to discuss a new coronavirus variant that was recently discovered in two travelers returning from abroad.
The two decided to leave the mask requirement for indoor spaces in place and reexamine it again over the course of April.
They also agreed to extend a government to safeguard the country's elderly population from the virus and expedite the installation of state-of-the-art air filtering systems in classrooms.