The Health Ministry is mulling a decision to scrap the country's mask mandate as daily coronavirus cases continue to drop.
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Coronavirus chief Nachman Ash said the decision would likely only apply to outdoor activities. "Masks are much more important when we are in a crowd or inside a confined space," told the Ynet news site, Thursday.
Noting mask-wearing would remain mandatory throughout the Passover holiday, set to begin the evening of March 27, Ash said, "We are in good shape, but we have not yet" defeated the pandemic.
According to Health Ministry data released Friday, 830 of the 65,406 people who tested for the coronavirus were found to have COVID-19, Thursday, for an infection rate of 1.3%. This was the lowest rate since June 2020, although it marked a 0.2% increase from Wednesday when just 478 people tested positive for the virus.
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Thanks to Israel's vaccination campaign, the country has seen a massive decline in new infections since January, when the positive test rate reached over 10%, despite the prevalence of the highly infectious UK variant.
So far, 5,213,638 Israelis have received at least one dose of the coronavirus vaccine, while 4,690,678 have received both doses.
There are currently 11,708 active cases of the disease across the country, 470 of which are serious. Of those in serious condition, 212 are on ventilators.
Since the start of the outbreak, 831,228 Israelis have been infected with the coronavirus, 6,164 of whom have died.
i24NEWS contributed to this report.
