A top Health Ministry official expressed cautious optimism Sunday that the second coronavirus outbreak that has been racing through Israel for weeks could be slowing down.
Ministry Director-General Professor Hezi Levy said that both the number of new daily cases and the positive rate of tests were have been steadily declining over the past five days.
Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter
Some 2,557 patients were diagnosed with the virus Saturday out of 24,781 who were screened, meaning 10.3% positive results. The number of active patients also dropped to 70,172 from 71,504 the day before, he said.
Levy told Channel 11 News that said that the public has "to be careful, but there we're seeing a declining trend in morbidity," adding that "we have to wait a few days to see if this trend persists."
He attributed the drop to public compliance with lockdown rules. "If we continue to travel on the roads unchecked and to congregate, we will not be able to prevent the increase in morbidity."
Eran Segal, a computational biologist at the Weizmann Institute of Science, also expressed cautious optimism about morbidity rates.
"The increase in morbidity in the general population may have been halted," he said, noting that infection rate in the Arab community has also decreased, though it seemed to still be high among the ultra-Orthodox.
He told that the infection rate among the general public currently stands at 10%, compared to 13% in the Arab sector and 28% in the Haredi community.
Still, the IDF's Coronavirus National Information Center said that the number of Israelis testing positive test rate was still relatively, indicating "a wider scope of morbidity than actually detected."
Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!
