The coronavirus infection rate continued to increase over the weekend and now stands at 2.07%, the highest it has been since Oct. 8, according to Health Ministry data published on Sunday morning.
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The reproduction rate, which relates to the number of people each confirmed carrier infects, is 1.41. Any value above 1 shows that morbidity is increasing.
Of the 37,538 Israelis who were screened for the virus in the past 24 hours, 760 tested positive. Omicron cases doubled over the weekend with 1,118 confirmed cases of the variant in the country.
There are currently 11,894 active cases in the country with 154 patients hospitalized. Of those, 98 are in serious condition (45 are in critical condition, 39 are on ventilators and 18 are connected to ECMO machines).
Israel reported 1,364,282 cases, including 8,242 deaths since the outbreak of the pandemic. No deaths were reported on Saturday.
Two cities are designated as "red" due to a high level of morbidity – Rishon LeZion and Ma'ale Adumim. Eight other localities are "orange" with slightly lower infection rates, including Tel Aviv, Holon, and Ra'anana.
Thus far, 4,191,735 Israelis have been vaccinated with the third shot, 5,876,953 received two doses and 6,502,720 got one jab.
On Thursday, a forecast presented to senior health officials predicted that Israel could reach 9,000 daily cases a day and 4.5 million Omicron infections within a month and a half, assuming the transmission of the strain is similar to its current spread globally, in countries such as Britain and Denmark.
However, if the spread accelerates, it has the potential to cripple the healthcare system in an unprecedented manner, as well as cause high morbidity in nursing homes, mass isolations for the education system, and widespread infection in defense and government institutions.
In Britain, the number of new cases went from 200 a day to 50,000 within two weeks, and the number of Omicron infections increased more than 60%. In London, in particular, it increased by 90%, and hospitalizations spiked. According to data, 1% of Britain's population gets infected every day.
Meanwhile, a team of health experts that advise the Health Ministry recommended on Sunday to reinstate the self-isolation exemption for fully vaccinated Israelis (three doses) if they come into contact with an Omicron carrier.
It also called on officials to stress to those at-risk that despite the mandatory "green pass" vaccination certificates across Israel's malls, public gatherings still pose danger.
The experts commended restrictions at Ben-Gurion International Airport as an effective means of curbing the spread of Omicron in the country. They said, however, that the state's no-fly list would need to be updated soon, giving Israelis more freedom to travel abroad.
The team did not recommend imposing new restrictions for now.
In related news, a shipment of one million Moderna vaccines arrived in Israel on Saturday, even though the doses are not commonly used in the country.
In the United States, however, the Food and Drug Administration approved freely utilizing any COVID-19 booster shot – Pfizer, Moderna, or Johnson & Johnson's – irrespective of their original vaccine type.
Such a policy has not been approved in Israel, nor have health officials discussed the matter so far. In August, the Health Ministry said Israelis over the age of 18 could receive a Moderna booster, but only 250,000 Israelis got immunized with the dose of the 16 million jabs that arrived in the country altogether.
Some research showed that patients who received booster shots from a different drug manufacturer developed a stronger antibody response.
