The Health Ministry reported 36,835 new coronavirus cases on Thursday morning. Altogether, 146,599 Israelis were screened for the disease in the past 24 hours, which puts the infection rate at 25.13%.
Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram
The reproduction rate, which refers to the number of people each confirmed carrier infects, decreased by 0.02 and stands at 0.77, the lowest since October 2021.
There are 324,802 active cases in the country with 2,525 patients hospitalized. Of those, 1,123 are in serious condition. Currently, 40,404 Israelis are in quarantine, including 626 doctors and 1373 nurses.
Thus far, 683,727 Israelis have been vaccinated with four doses, 4,452,487 with three, 6,109,763 with two, and 6,694,481 have received one shot.
Israel has reported 3,337,574 cases, including 9,370 deaths, since the outbreak of the pandemic in March 2020.
Meanwhile, officials at the World Health Organization's Eastern Mediterranean Regional Office reported on Wednesday that Middle Eastern countries have seen a rise in coronavirus infections in the last six weeks due to low vaccination rates.
Reported COVID-19 cases rose to a daily average of 110,000 in the past six weeks, while average daily deaths rose to 345 in the last three weeks, WHO regional director Ahmed Al-Mandhari said.
According to Rana Hajjeh, director of program management, more than 35% of the region's population is fully vaccinated. But one quarter of the countries have not yet reached 10% vaccination coverage.
The WHO's Eastern Mediterranean region comprises the Middle East, Egypt, Somalia, Sudan, Djibouti, and Afghanistan, among others.
In other news, researchers in Hungary have discovered an early version of COVID-19 in samples from a Chinese biotechnology firm that appears to have been grown in a laboratory, according to a report by The Telegraph on Wednesday, lending weight to claims that the virus may have been engineered in a lab and accidentally leaked out.
The scientists made the discovery by accident when examining genetic data from soil samples collected from Antarctica in late 2018 and early 2019.
According to The Telegraph, the variant has mutations that bridge the gap between bat coronavirus and the earliest Wuhan strain, suggesting it may be an ancestral version of the virus.
The samples were sent to Sangon Biotech in Shanghai for sequencing in December 2019, where they became contaminated with a previously unknown variant of COVID-19, the paper said.
Chinese scientists – including the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the suspected location for the leak – often used Sangon Biotech for sequencing.
Although the exact date at which the DNA extraction took place is unknown, scientists say that if it took place in December 2019, the virus could be the ancestor of the original human Wuhan strain.
Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!
In related news, Sweden scrapped almost all of its few pandemic restrictions on Wednesday and stopped most testing for COVID.
The moves came even as the pressure on the healthcare systems remained high and some scientists begged for more patience in fighting the disease.
Sweden's government, which throughout the pandemic has opted against lockdowns in favor of a voluntary approach, announced last week it would scrap the remaining restrictions — effectively declaring the pandemic over — as vaccines and the less deadly Omicron variant have cushioned severe cases and deaths.
"As we know this pandemic, I would say it's over," Health Minister Lena Hallengren told daily Dagens Nyheter. "It's not over, but as we know it in terms of quick changes and restrictions it is," she said, adding that COVID would no longer be classified as a danger to society.
As of Wednesday, bars and restaurants will be allowed to stay open after 11 p.m. again with no limits on the number of guests. Limits for larger indoor venues were also lifted, as was the use of vaccine passes.
Sweden follows Scandinavian neighbor Denmark in removing most COVID restrictions. Denmark last week became one of the first European Union countries to remove most restrictions, saying that COVID was no longer considered "a socially critical disease."
i24NEWS contributed to this report.
