The Health Ministry reported Wednesday morning that of the 82,141 Israelis it screened for the coronavirus in the past 24 hours, 903 (1.1%) tested positive. The reproduction rate stands at 1.26, slightly down from the day before.
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There are currently 8,637 active cases in the country with 123 patients hospitalized. Of those, 80 are in serious condition.
Israel has reported 1,358,386 cases, including 8,235 deaths, since the outbreak of the pandemic last year. No deaths were reported on Wednesday.
Thus far, 4,170,593 Israelis have been fully vaccinated, 5,849,392 received two doses, and 6,471,678 got one jab.
Also on Wednesday, the ministry launched a large-scale vaccination campaign in several malls across Israel in order to encourage more Israelis to get inoculated.
Vaccination stations will operate between 11 a.m. and 8 p.m. with no prior registering required.
The move is part of the ministry's campaign to make vaccination sites more accessible to the general population. It works together with the Education Ministry, hospitals, health funds, local authorities, and the IDF's Home Front Command to do so.
The campaign consists of four parts: continued vaccination efforts in health funds; immunization in schools by health fund nurses and mobile vaccination vehicles; vaccination sites in key locations in local authorities; and vaccination stations in malls.
On Tuesday night, a Health Ministry task force recommended that a fourth vaccination dose be administered to Israelis age 60 and over, to healthcare workers, at-risk patients, and people who work with the elderly.
Professor Nimrod Maimon, head of the ministry's Magen Avot v'Imahot assisted living program, said staff had already begun preparing for a fourth dose as "the working assumption is that Omicron will reach the nursing homes eventually."
Maimon said he "highly recommended" administering the fourth dose to all senior citizens in Israel.
"We have seen how effective the booster is, and how the older population has almost no serious side effects at all … Giving our parents another dose will further strengthen their immunity and will benefit them," he said.
Meanwhile, in the United States, President Joe Biden announced the government will provide 500 million free rapid home-testing kits, increase support for hospitals under strain and redouble vaccination and boosting efforts as Omicron continues to surge through the country.
At the White House on Tuesday, Biden detailed major changes to his COVID-19 winter plan, his hand forced by the fast-spreading variant, whose properties are not yet fully understood by scientists. Yet his message was clear that the winter holidays could be close to normal for the vaccinated while potentially dangerous for the unvaccinated.
"It's the only responsible thing to do," the president said. "Omicron is serious and potentially deadly business for unvaccinated people," Biden said and criticized misleading statements posted on social media that discourage people from getting vaccinated.
The US has reported 52,253,848 cases since the outbreak of the pandemic and 830,990 deaths.
South Africa, where Omicron was first detected, reported a noticeable drop in new coronavirus cases in recent days that may signal that the country's dramatic Omicron-driven surge has passed its peak, medical experts say.
Daily virus case counts are notoriously unreliable, as they can be affected by uneven testing, reporting delays, and other fluctuations. But they are offering one tantalizing hint – far from conclusive yet – that Omicron infections may recede quickly after a ferocious spike.
South Africa has been at the forefront of the omicron wave and the world is watching for any signs of how it may play out there to try to understand what may be in store.
After hitting a high of nearly 27,000 new cases nationwide on Thursday, the numbers dropped to about 15,424 on Tuesday. In Gauteng province – South Africa's most populous with 16 million people, including the largest city, Johannesburg, and the capital, Pretoria – the decrease started earlier and has continued.
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