The highly-contagious Delta wave of coronavirus continues to subside in Israel. The Health Ministry announced on Friday morning that of the 68,769 Israelis it screened for the coronavirus the day before, 513 (0.75%) tested positive. The reproduction rate stands at 0.84.
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As of Friday, there were 6,676 active cases in the country, with 241 Israelis hospitalized, 84.6% of whom have not been vaccinated against the coronavirus at all. Of the 176 patients in serious condition, 112 were on ventilators.
Thus far, 3,975,816 Israelis have been fully vaccinated, 5,739,699 received two jabs, and 6,244,455 have received a single dose.
According to the government's "stoplight" ranking system, only one Israeli city is currently designated as "red" due to high morbidity. Ten cities are "orange" and 41 are "yellow."
On the education front, 28,605 students are in isolation, 3,603 of whom are active carriers. Over half (59.6%) of them are vaccinated. As for the teachers, 549 are in quarantine, 182 of them were found to be infected with the coronavirus.
However, while the Delta wave has significantly subsided in Israel, things are looking dim in Europe. According to Hans Kluge, the World Health Organization's regional director for Europe, the continent has become the epicenter of the pandemic, accounting for 59% of global cases.
"Europe is back to where it was a year ago," Kluge said, attributing the alarming infection and mortality rates to the lax public health and social measures and the declining level of immunization in the region.
He said that hospitalizations in the region more than doubled in one week and according to projections, at the current pace, Europe could see another half a million COVID deaths by Feb. 1.
With only 47% of Europe vaccinated, "we must change our tactics from reacting to surges to preventing them from happening in the first place," Kluge said and called on nations with low inoculation rates to pick up speed and vaccinate their citizens, especially the elderly and those at risk.
There are currently 5,516,572 active cases in Europe. The continents has reported 65,623,332 cases since the outbreak of the pandemic and 1,319,214 deaths.
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