For the fourth day in a row, the Health Ministry has reported that more than 10,000 people were diagnosed with corona, as students completed their second day of school and prayer-goers were being asked to hold services outside.
Some 11,246 new cases out of around 145,000 tests that were performed on Wednesday were diagnosed with the virus, the Health Ministry reported on Thursday evening, with 7.9% of those screened testing positive – the highest percentage since the start of the pandemic.
Israel is in first place in the world in the number of daily cases per capita in the last seven days, according to international reports.
Meanwhile, the ministry’s decision to exempt vaccinated and recovered Israelis from isolation after returning from “orange” countries goes into effect on Friday. The move comes as the ministry redefined what it means to be vaccinated and recovered: individuals must have received a third shot of the Pfizer vaccine in Israel; have received two doses within the last six months; have recovered and received one dose of the vaccine; or have recovered within the last six months and/or been shown to have antibodies via a serological test.
People who qualify must be screened for the virus on landing and isolated until they receive a negative result or for 24 hours, whichever comes first.
The exemption for those vaccinated only applies to whoever was inoculated in Israel with the Pfizer vaccine.
“We believe that the virus will be with us for a while,” said coronavirus commissioner Prof. Salman Zarka in a briefing on Thursday. He said that the idea is not to stay at home but to continue with life, just in a safer way.
“Give a shoulder,” he said, by getting vaccinated and also by following the rules to keep each other safe.
Experts have said that the spike in new cases is tied to the Education and Health ministries’ request of parents to administer COVID tests to their children at home ahead of the start of the school year, which started on Wednesday. Around half of the new diagnoses were students under age 18.
The antigen tests likely revealed cases of asymptomatic infection. Parents were asked to take their kids to their local health funds to verify positive results, thereby entering the students into the national corona statistical database.
In total, more than 40,000 students have been diagnosed with the virus. In addition, some 57,000 are in isolation, the Education Ministry has reported.
But the campaign did prove a success. N12 reported that two million parents screened their kids, discovering 7,900 sick students who would have put some 180,000 classmates into isolation had they gone to school.
The station estimated that the antigen testing saved the country NIS 14.5 million, not including workdays those parents could have lost.
Zarka said students might be asked to take another antigen test after the High Holy Day period before returning to school in October. The goal would be the same: to catch sick kids before they infect their friends and teachers.
The country has 171 “red areas,” meaning those with the highest levels of infection. In those areas, high school classes in which at least 70% of students are not vaccinated are being forced to learn on Zoom or outside.
Prime Minister Naftali Bennett held a special briefing on TikTok late Wednesday in which he told students that the vaccines work, and that they should be approved for youngsters between the ages of six and 12 within the next two months.
“The vaccine is not poisonous,” Bennett told the teens. “The poison is the virus. The vaccine only strengthens the body and the antibodies to fight the virus.”
The reproduction rate was at 1.09 on Thursday, the Health Ministry showed.
Nearly 90,000 were infected with corona, including 1,068 who were hospitalized, among them 673 in serious condition.
The number of serious cases continues to decline. It was at 750 earlier in the week.
“For the first time in this fourth wave, this week there were fewer new critically ill patients compared with the previous week,” tweeted Eran Segal, a computational biologist from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot who advises the government. “The reproduction rate, according to serious cases, has fallen below one and stands at 0.98.”
The number of serious cases who are unvaccinated has surpassed the number of vaccinated, despite there being nearly 5.5 million fully vaccinated (two shots) Israelis and less than one million unvaccinated. Some 363 serious patients are unvaccinated, according to the Health Ministry, and 282 are vaccinated.
Moreover, 209 unvaccinated people over the age of 60 are in serious condition – out of only 100,000 unvaccinated people – compared with 222 vaccinated individuals out of 1.5 million.
As N12 analyzed it: 100,000 unvaccinated people over the age of 60 are responsible for 30% of serious infections.
But Zarka said the ministry has only “mild optimism,” and that it is “too early” to tell if the number of serious cases will remain steadily on the decline. He advised older people and those with underlying medical conditions to continue staying away from crowded areas while the Delta variant continues to circulate.
He said that people who want to go to services on Rosh Hashanah should pray outdoors, and that families with young children should screen their children at home before inviting grandparents over for meals.
He said that “two strong forces” are continuing to fight for the win: the virus versus the vaccine and other positive behaviors, such as mask-wearing and social distancing. Zarka said that he hoped that by October the country would see fewer infections.
Nearly six million Israelis have received at least one dose of the COVID vaccine, and almost 2.4 million have already had a third dose, the ministry said.
The Advisory Committee for the Corona Vaccines met until late Thursday to discuss whether to vaccinate people who recovered from the virus with an additional booster shot. A member of the committee said that requiring the shot was expected to pass. A decision had not been made by press time.
Finally, the Health Ministry and the Home Front Command announced that they would begin using WhatsApp to help run epidemiological investigations and better cut chains of infection. People verified with corona may start receiving a request from a virtual interviewer via the platform.