The Health Ministry reported 37,559 new coronavirus cases on Wednesday morning. In the past 24 hours, 154,878 Israelis were screened for the disease, which puts the infection rate at 24.25%.
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There are 320,470 active cases in the country with 2,614 patients hospitalized. Of those, 1,164 are in serious condition – 350 are critically ill, 273 are on ventilators and 22 are connected to ECMO machines. Currently, 42,026 Israelis are in quarantine.
Thus far, 679,158 Israelis have been vaccinated with four doses, 4,451,420 with three, 6,108,506 with two, and 6,694,077 have received one shot.
Israel has reported 3,301,485 COVID cases, including 9,303 deaths, since the outbreak of the pandemic in March 2020.
Meanwhile, the European Union is pushing for a global deal aimed at preventing new pandemics that could include a ban on wildlife markets and incentives for countries to report new viruses or variants, an EU official told Reuters.
International negotiators will meet for the first time on Wednesday to prepare talks for a potential treaty, said the official, who was not authorized to speak to media and so declined to be named.
The aim is to reach a preliminary agreement by August.
However, Brussels has so far struggled to get full backing for a new treaty from the United States and other major countries, some of which want any agreement to be non-binding.
A spokesperson for Charles Michel, the president of the European Council who in November 2020 proposed a new treaty on pandemics, said he had no fresh comment on the matter.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
According to the most widely accepted theory, the COVID-19 pandemic began with the transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus from an animal to humans in a wildlife market in China.
Although Beijing was initially praised by the World Health Organization for notifying it quickly of the new virus, the US, in particular, has accused China of holding back information about the likely origins of the outbreak.
Among measures the EU wants to be included in the treaty is a gradual shutdown of wildlife markets, the EU official said.
Incentives for countries to report new viruses are also seen as crucial to help with speedy detection and avoid cover-ups.
Last year, southern African nations were hit with punishing flight restrictions after they identified the Omicron coronavirus variant, which some fear could deter reporting of future outbreaks if incentives are not attractive enough.
The official said incentives could include guaranteed access to medicines and vaccines developed against new viruses, which poorer nations have struggled to obtain quickly during the COVID-19 pandemic as wealthier states rushed to secure supplies.
States that detect and report a new virus could also receive immediate support, which might involve shipments of medical equipment from a global stockpile.
Talks will involve delegates from six countries, representing the world's main regions - Japan, the Netherlands, Brazil, South Africa, Egypt, and Thailand, officials said.
Brazil, which will represent northern and southern American countries, favors a non-binding treaty.
The EU, which will be represented by the Netherlands, wants to introduce legally-binding obligations to prevent and report new virus outbreaks, an EU document seen by Reuters says.
If an agreement is reached, the treaty is expected to be signed in May 2024.
As part of an overhaul of global health rules, countries are also negotiating tweaks to the International Health Regulations, a set of global rules to prevent the spread of infectious diseases.
The United States wants to strengthen rules to boost transparency and grant the WHO quick access to outbreak sites, two sources following the discussions told Reuters.
In other news, Japanese researchers at Kyoto University have found that the Omicron variant can survive on plastic surfaces and human skin longer than previous mutations.
Its high "environmental stability" – ability to remain infectious – might have helped Omicron replace Delta as the dominant strain and spread rapidly, the scientists said.
On plastic surfaces, average survival times of the original strain and the Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta variants were 56 hours, 191.3 hours, 156.6 hours, 59.3 hours, and 114.0 hours, respectively. That compared to 193.5 hours for Omicron, the researchers reported on bioRxiv ahead of peer review.
On skin samples from cadavers, average virus survival times were 8.6 hours for the original version, 19.6 hours for Alpha, 19.1 hours for Beta, 11.0 hours for Gamma, 16.8 hours for Delta, and 21.1 hours for Omicron.
On skin, all of the variants were completely inactivated by 15 seconds of exposure to alcohol-based hand sanitizers, with researchers recommending following the World Health Organization's current hand hygiene practices.
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In related news, a new study published on Monday concluded that children find it more difficult than adults to recognize faces behind masks.
The study, led by Ben-Gurion University in Beersheva and York University in Toronto, found that children had difficulty recognizing faces partially covered by masks, leading to social challenges.
While a previous study showed that mask-wearing hindered recognition in adults, the latest study shows it is much worse in children.
In a statement on Tuesday, Ben-Gurion University said that being unable to recognize faces "could potentially impact social interactions with peers and educators, as well as the ability to form important relationships" in the context of the pandemic.
"Faces are among the most important visual stimuli. We use facial information to determine different attributes about a person, including their gender, age, mood, and intentions. We use this information to navigate through social interactions," said York University Assistant Professor Erez Freud, the study's senior author, according to The Times of Israel.
The study examined 72 children aged 6 to 14, showing faces with and without masks, using a children's version of the Cambridge Face Memory Test.
Children's face-perception abilities were impaired when presented with masked faces more than adults, a 20% impairment level in children compared to a 15% rate for adults.
"Not only do masks hinder children's ability to recognize faces, but they also disrupt the typical, holistic way that faces are processed," Freud said.
i24NEWS contributed to this report.
