Coronavirus infections have been on the rise again over the past two weeks, but serious illness and deaths have continued to decline, indicating that Israel’s vaccination campaign is helping prevent a major resurgence in morbidity.
On June 14, Israel had 206 active cases, a figure that had risen to 1,254 as of Monday after a series of local outbreaks.
Since then, only one COVID-19 death has been recorded in the country and serious cases have come down from 30 to 22.
The spike in cases has had no apparent adverse effect on these numbers, apparently due to higher levels of vaccination among older Israelis and at-risk groups. Most of the recent cases are in young people, who are less vulnerable to serious illness.
According to the latest figures from the Ministry of Health, 51 percent of active infections are among Israelis who are 19 or younger and 77.3% hospitalized in critical condition who have not been vaccinated.
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Additionally, there has been a gradual decrease in the number of new cases and the positive test rate over the past few days as more than 200 infections were recorded on both Thursday and Friday, the highest daily caseload in two months.
Vaccination rates have also started rising again in recent times as the government pushes to immunize children aged 12-15 years.
An Israeli receives a COVID-19 vaccine at a Clalit vaccination center in Jerusalem on June 24, 2021. (Yontan Sindel / Flash 90)
Most of the increase in recent cases has been concentrated in several municipalities, some of which were and downgraded On Monday, the health ministry’s “traffic light” point system to measure the severity of morbidity in a given community as cases continued to rise there.
To tackle rising infections, the health ministry on Friday reimposed the indoor mask mandate and the government has moved to tighten rules on travel, amid concerns that the more contagious delta variant has recently been reported in the country. The entry was booming.
Meeting on Sunday evening for the first time since a new government was sworn in, the coronavirus cabinet discussed increased testing and enforcement at Israel’s borders and an enhanced effort to vaccinate teens – but did not add any major new restrictions.
There have been a total of 840,995 confirmed cases in Israel, and 6,429 deaths from the virus since the pandemic began. Of Israel’s population of approximately 9.3 million people, more than 5.1 million people have received doses of both vaccines; More than 5.5 million people have received at least one shot.
