For the first time in four months, Israel has over 10,194 active cases of the virus.
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Of the 75,654 people who tested for the virus Thursday, 1,263 were found to have COVID-19, for an infection rate of 1.83%.
Eighty-one Israelis are in serious condition, 23 of whom are in critical condition and 17 on ventilators. Although 840,801 people have recovered from the virus, 6,457 have died.
According to the government's traffic-light plan for ranking local authorities according to infection rates, one Israeli community is now "red," 15 are "orange," and 57 are "yellow."
In an interview with Army Radio Friday, Dr. Arnon Shahar, who serves on the panel advising the government on the coronavirus, said: "We expect additional waves, we're before the winter."
"The more vaccinated people there are, [the more] we can contain morbidity. The studies may sound confusing, but this [Pfizer's] vaccine is effective. We can't talk about herd immunity until all age groups can be vaccinated," he said.
On Friday, the Health Ministry presented data according to which officials had ascertained the status of just 42% of the nearly 23,000 people currently in quarantine.
Meanwhile, the IDF's Homefront Command has called to increase the number of people involved in epidemiological investigations as well as the number of investigations themselves. Currently, investigations are launched into confirmed patients only, with those investigations being prioritized due to a shortage of manpower.
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