Israel hit another record on Friday evening, as the Health Ministry reported that 1,130 people were diagnosed with the novel coronavirus the day before. The nation passed the figure of 10,000 patients for the first time since the pandemic began.
Among the now 10,060 sick patients (17,669 of Israel’s 28,055 patients have already recovered), some 77 are in serious condition – a number that has continued to grow in the past week.
Moreover, the death toll is rising, reaching 326 on Friday morning.
The new number of patients was released as a series of restrictions were rolled out at 8 a.m. on Friday morning. Event halls, bars, clubs and prayer houses will be limited to 50 attendees. Any other gatherings in closed spaces are now limited to 20 people.
During a briefing on Thursday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that the number of patients in serious condition increased by 50% in just the last week.
“We must return to the reality of restrictions in order to flatten the curve,” he said.
Until now, there has been a tangible difference between this wave of coronavirus and the first one, in that although the number of infected people has continued to climb each day, the number of patients in serious condition or who are intubated has remained stable and low. Similarly, although there have been more deaths in recent days, the mortality curve is lower than in the first wave.
However, Netanyahu and Health Minister Yuli Edelstein expressed concern on Thursday that this was changing.
Netanyahu said: “Anyone who says, ‘But there are no serious patients’ – at first it really was that way,” but he said they have begun to infect others. “The data is sharp and clear and leaves us with no choice. We have to go back to the reality of restrictions to flatten the curve.”
Edelstein explained that in all of June the hospitals treated 103 patients in serious condition. In one-and-a-half days of July 10 are already being treated.
“This is a bad innovation of the last few days,” a senior parliamentary source told The Jerusalem Post. He explained that Israel likely did not see a quick rise in serious cases because “young people initially infected other young people, and now they are infecting older people. This means that there is a significant increase in hospital load and, sadly, deaths.”
There are those that have argued that the disease has “weakened” this time around.
Prof. Matteo Bassetti, head of the infectious diseases clinic at Italy’s Policlinico San Martino Hospital, told The Telegraph in a recent interview that the virus has changed.
“The clinical impression I have is that the virus is changing in severity,” he said. “In March and early April, the patterns were completely different. People were coming to the emergency department with a very difficult-to-manage illness, and they needed oxygen and ventilation, some developed pneumonia.
“Now, in the past four weeks, the picture has completely changed in terms of patterns. There could be a lower viral load in the respiratory tract, probably due to a genetic mutation in the virus which has not yet been demonstrated scientifically. Also, we are now more aware of the disease and able to manage it,” he said.
Prof. Jonathan Gershoni of Tel Aviv University’s School of Molecular Cell Biology and Biotechnology said he disagrees.
“I would not try to ascribe to the virus anything new or biological – that all of a sudden it is more infectious or more potent,” Gershoni said. “This is simply not the case; the virus is the same.”
On Friday, an intern who works with the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee tested positive for coronavirus, the Knesset Spokesperson’s Office said. Although the Knesset has been trying to continue regular operations by separating members with partitions and social distancing in the plenum by sending opposition MKs to the stand, there does still need to be a full epidemiological investigation into the intern’s whereabouts. It is possible that his diagnosis will complicate the situation for any number of MKs and could even result in temporarily disabling the committee.
This is not the first time there has been coronavirus in the Knesset. In June, Joint List MK Sami Abu Shehadeh tested positive for coronavirus. Around the same time, Science and Technology Minister Izhar Shay went into quarantine following an assistant receiving a positive test for COVID-19.
And recall, in April, Netanyahu, Mossad Director Yossi Cohen, National Security Council Adviser Meir Ben-Shabbat and former Health Ministry director-general Moshe Bar Siman Tov entered quarantine after Health Minister Ya’acov Litzman was diagnosed with the coronavirus.
The senior source told the Post that the morbidity rate in hospitals is on the rise, as well, and often under-reported. On Friday, the Health Ministry showed that 1,700 medical personnel were in isolation.
The source complimented the government on imposing new restrictions but said that daily testing still needs to be increased and that more contact tracers need to be hired.
On Thursday, the Health Ministry screened nearly 24,500 people for the virus – the highest number in a single day to date. The percentage of people who tested positive is around 4.5%.
“We need 100,000 tests a day and that’s possible,” he said.
Police are stepping up enforcement. According to a report Friday afternoon, Police administered more than 3,000 fines to people who were not wearing masks in public spaces and 10 to businesses that were not following the Health Ministry’s guidelines.
Tickets were also given out to people for breaking isolation and to businesses that were operating in restricted zones.
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