The Omicron coronavirus wave continues to decrease in Israel with 9,120 new cases reported by the Health Ministry on Friday morning. Altogether, 76,601 Israelis were screened for the virus in the past 24 hours, which puts the infection rate at 11.91%.
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There are 93,350 active cases in the country with 1,437 patients hospitalized. Of those, 653 are in serious condition: 276 are critically ill, 230 are on ventilators and 24 are connected to ECMO machines. Currently, 34,158 Israelis are in self-isolation.
Thus far, 725,541 Israelis have been vaccinated with four doses, 4,462,974 with three, 6,119,901 with two, and 6,698,743 have been inoculated with one shot.
Israel has reported 3,604,835 COVID cases, including 10,108 deaths, since the outbreak of the pandemic in March 2020.
As Omicron begins to wane in other countries worldwide as well, governments begin to ease restrictions on public life.
In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is expected to announce Friday a change to the metrics it uses to determine whether to recommend face coverings, shifting from looking at COVID case counts to a more holistic view of risk from the coronavirus to a community.
Under current guidelines, masks are recommended for people residing in communities of substantial or high transmission – roughly 95% of US counties, according to the latest data.
The new metrics will still consider caseloads, but also take into account hospitalizations and local hospital capacity, which have been markedly improved during the emergence of Omicron. The strain is highly transmissible, but indications are that it is less severe than earlier strains, particularly for people who are fully vaccinated and boosted.
Under the new guidelines, the vast majority of Americans will no longer live in areas where indoor masking in public is recommended, based on current data.
Iceland too is expected to lift all remaining COVID restrictions on Friday, including a 200-person indoor gathering limit and restricted opening hours for bars, the country's Health Ministry said on Wednesday.
"Widespread societal resistance to COVID-19 is the main route out of the epidemic," the ministry said in a statement, citing infectious disease authorities.
"To achieve this, as many people as possible need to be infected with the virus as the vaccines are not enough, even though they provide good protection against serious illness," it added.
All border restrictions would also be lifted, it said.
Iceland, with a population of some 368,000 people, has registered between 2,100 and 2,800 daily infections recently. More than 115,000 infections have been logged throughout the epidemic and 61 have died due to COVID-19.
Meanwhile, the World Health Organization has signed a contract with Deutsche Telekom subsidiary T-Systems to build a software solution for global electronic verification of coronavirus vaccination certificates, the telecoms company said on Wednesday.
The QR code-based software solution will be used for other vaccinations as well, such as polio or yellow fever, T-Systems said in a statement, adding that the WHO would support its 194 member states in building national and regional verification technology. The financial details of the transaction were not disclosed.
"Health is a strategic growth area for T-Systems," said T-Systems Chief Executive Officer Adel Al-Saleh.
T-Systems previously worked with SAP to develop Germany's Corona-Warn-App tracing and verification app and a Europe-wide digital COVID-19 vaccine verification system.
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