Israel's coronavirus infection rate stands at 26.12%, according to Health Ministry data released Sunday morning. Of the 76,161 people who tested for the virus Saturday, 18,020 were found to have the disease. The reproduction rate is on the decline and now stands at 0.73.
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There are 299,361 active cases of the virus. There are 1,057 people in serious condition, 269 of whom are on ventilators and 21 of whom are hooked up to ECMO machines.
Although 3,095,130 Israelis have recovered from COVID-19 since the outbreak of the pandemic, 9,466 have died.
While hospitals in Israel are under less pressure than earlier on in the fifth wave of the pandemic, they are still operating at maximum capacity.
Meanwhile, a recent Israeli study has found that women are almost twice as likely as men to report side effects after receiving Pfizer's coronavirus vaccine.
Researchers examined reports to the Health Ministry from people who experienced side effects after receiving a dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine between December 2019 and June 2021. It also included three additional surveys conducted in June and September of last year.
Researchers looked at gender differences and found that women were 1.89 times more likely to report side effects after the first dose of vaccine and 1.82 times more likely to report side effects than men after the second dose.
"We don't know what mechanism is involved, but it may be related to differences between the sexes in the immune system or in the perception of the side effects. One possibility is that the immune system in women responds more strongly than in men to foreign antigens," Manfred Green, lead researcher in the study, told the Israeli tech news site NoCamels.
Fatigue and pain at the injection site were common mild side effects, while serious side effects were found to be much rarer.
According to the study, the ratio of women reporting arm pain after receiving the vaccine was seven times higher than men after the first dose and 4.13 times higher after the second dose.
The study found women were also 9.15 times more likely to report headaches after receiving the vaccine was also higher than that of men after the first dose and 3.28 times higher after the second dose.
The study was published in the medical journal Vaccines.
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