Coronavirus transmission rates are edging up again, putting into question the government's plans to gradually resume full economic activity.
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The Health Ministry said Monday that the R rate – the virus' reproduction rate – rose back to 1. Ministers are set to debate the next steps in lifting the restrictions imposed as part of the third lockdown later in the evening.
"R" measures the coronavirus' ability to spread by indicating how many other people each person carrier is likely to infect.
The Health Ministry has stated that maintaining the R rate at 1 or below is one of the criteria necessary to allow relaxing restrictions, as is the number of people who have been fully vaccinated and the number of patients in serious condition.
Israel has recorded 778,172 coronavirus cases since the onset of the pandemic in March 2020, including 5,758 deaths.
There are currently 38,480 active COVID-19 patients, 742 of whom are in serious condition. To date, 733,410 Israelis have recovered from the disease.
Data further shows that as of Monday, 4,723,966 Israelis have received the first dose of the coronavirus vaccine, and 3,368,759 have been fully immunized.
Also on Monday, the High Court of Justice ruled that the Shin Bet security agency's controversial phone tracing program, designed to detect contact between coronavirus carriers and those around them, can only be used for those who do not cooperate with the Health Ministry's epidemiological investigations.
The court debated the issue following petitions by four rights groups, which argued it was no longer necessary. The court ruled that starting March 14, the Israel Security Agency will use phone tracing as a "complementary tool only," for individual cases, as necessary.
Deputy Health Minister Yoav Kisch slammed the court's ruling as a "crime against the Israel public's health," noting that the tracking program "saved the lives of over 500,000 people."
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