(i24)
Israeli media outlets reported on Friday that Israel now leads the world in the daily COVID-19 infection rate per capita with 199.3 new cases per 1 million people.
Using the Johns Hopkins University coronavirus tracker as their metric, multiple media outlets reported that the startling numbers are confined to small window of time between August 26 and September 2nd.
Israel is thus the country where the morbidity rate has accelerated the fastest (+ 57%, or 2,202 new cases per day) among nations that are recording more than 1,000 daily cases on average during the past week.
Earlier this week, Israel’s Health Ministry announced that it had confirmed more than 3,000 infections on Wednesday, the highest single-day number recorded since the start of the pandemic.
As a result, Israeli government authorities announced Thursday evening that they will be enforcing a generalized lockdown starting Monday of 30 localities, considered “red zones,” in an effort to curb the spread of the disease.
To fight against the spread of the virus, the authorities adopted a so-called “traffic light” plan last Sunday dividing localities into four categories according to their rate of infection. These categories are “red”, “orange”, “yellow” and “green”, the first color corresponding to the sectors registering the most cases.
The confinement will last a week, initially, and will mainly include Arab towns and villages, as well as ultra-Orthodox communities.
The hardest-hit Middle Eastern country, however, remains Iran, with 380,746 cases and 21,926 deaths.
