On the day after Rosh Hashanah, the fourth wave of the coronavirus in Israel appeared to be receding, but avoiding complacency remains crucial, Health Ministry Director-General Prof. Nachman Ash said.
“We are after Rosh Hashanah and the start of the school year, while the period of the holidays continues,” Ash said during a press briefing. “Although the R has dropped below 1, we must not be complacent. In recent days, there has been a slight slowdown in morbidity data, which can be attributed to the effect of the third vaccine.”
He invited the public to continue keeping the rules and to get vaccinated.
On Wednesday night, the R, or reproduction rate – which measures how many people each virus carrier infects on average and mirrors the situation of about 10 days prior – dropped below 1 for the first time. The decrease continued on Thursday when the R stood at 0.83, the lowest since the beginning of the fourth wave.
On the day after Rosh Hashanah, the Health Ministry said the number of new coronavirus cases identified on Wednesday stood at 3,247, the lowest in about a month and significantly less than some 11,000 new virus carriers identified on most weekdays last week.
However, the figure has limited significance considering that only 60,000 tests were processed on Wednesday and 96,000 on Tuesday, as opposed to the 150,000 and more on previous days.
Monitoring the trends of the pandemic by looking at the number of daily cases might be misleading. During the weekend – or a holiday – fewer people go to get tested. In addition, in most cases, it takes around 24 hours to return the result of a test. For this reason, even the first workday after the break presents lower figures because of the lower number of tests processed.
Looking at the Israeli data, Sundays pretty consistently present fewer tests and cases than other weekdays, and Mondays more.
Even considering the positivity rate – the percentage of people who get screened with positive results – can be tricky. Sometimes, people would go and get tested during the weekend if they have a strong reason to believe they might be infected, and otherwise might decide to postpone. Therefore, often a higher rate of people who undergo a test turn out to be positive.
The positivity rate on Wednesday stood at 5.44%, down from 7.22% on Tuesday and 6.06% on Monday.
To solve the problem, health officials and experts look at the daily average calculated on a weekly basis to counter the physiological fluctuations within the same week. However, a two day-holiday in the middle of the week, like Rosh Hashanah this year, highly impacts this type of data as well.
For this reason, it might be the beginning of next week before the number of daily cases can be apprised with any degree of confidence.
In the meantime, however, other data are important to look at.
Besides the R, the number of serious patients who remained stable for several days also remained encouraging. As of Thursday, it stood at 680.
On Thursday, as on the day before Rosh Hashanah, long lines were registered at coronavirus PCR testing stations around the country.
Ash reminded the public during a press briefing that for the purpose of receiving a temporary Green Pass for the unvaccinated or those who recovered – including children – hundreds of coronavirus rapid testing stations are available around the country with no lines. He asked people to use them instead of getting a PCR test, which is intended only for getting access to hotels (as well as to test those who are exposed to a verified patient or need to get tested to end quarantine).
Of the current 84,000 active cases, half of whom are schoolchildren, there are some 7,000 more than when the school year started on September 1. Another 102,000 students are in isolation, down from some 60,000 mid-last week.
Asked about these numbers, Ash noted that considering the high morbidity in the country, they were to be expected.
“I very much hope that we are now in a phase of declining morbidity so they will decrease,” he said, adding that there was no plan to change the outline for the education system.
Later in the day, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said that the government is working to address the issue, adding another 15 stations and shifting resources to the busiest ones.