By: Aryeh Savir
The number of new Coronavirus (COVID-19) patients recorded in Israel remained low, while the infection rate, which was in a significant decline, has stabilized, leading to fears that the country will have to postpone a further ease in the restrictions on the economy.
The Ministry of Health updated Monday morning that it recorded 649 new cases in the past 24 hours.
Of the 21,894 corona tests done on Sunday, 3.1% returned positive.
315 of the 649 new cases came from the Arab community. The Health Ministry has warned that hundreds of tourists returning from Turkey are spreading the virus while massive events are still taking place in the Arab-Israeli society.
Professor Eran Segal, an expert at the Weizmann Institute, pointed out that the infection coefficient R is already above 0.8 and only represents the effect of the first relief phase which occurred two weeks ago.
The facilitation of the second phase, which included the opening of grades 1-4, is expected to further raise the R, so it is not certain that Israel will be able to commence with phase 3 in the easing of the restrictions, he said,
He further warned that winter is expected to raise the R further because of crowds in closed places, as has already happened in Europe.
“In light of these data, it is of course not worthwhile to further relieve of the restrictions in the next two weeks until we understand the effect of opening grades one through four,” he said.
Similarly, the IDF’s Military Intelligence Directorate published on Monday a report warning that the rate of new daily patients has stabilized, meaning that the drop in the infection rate has stopped.
However, the report noted that the number of patients hospitalized in serious condition and the number of daily deaths continue to decline.
According to the Health Ministry’s data, 372 corona patients are hospitalized in serious condition, of whom 170 are on life support.
Of the 315,131 Israelis who have contracted the virus since the outbreak in the country in February, 2,554 have died.
TPS also reported on Monday that Health Minister Yuli Edelstein unveiled a new Israeli-developed Coronavirus (COVID-19) test that will shorten the processing time in the laboratories from eight hours to four and will be safer and based on robot activity.
The transfer of the samples taken from patients to a sub-test tube currently takes about an hour. The treatment of the tests by the Israeli robot without the need for a sub-test tube will take only five minutes .
(TPS)