The Health Ministry reported 36,835 new coronavirus cases on Thursday morning. Altogether, 146,599 Israelis were screened for the disease in the past 24 hours, which puts the infection rate at 25.13%. 

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The reproduction rate, which refers to the number of people each confirmed carrier infects, decreased by 0.02 and stands at 0.77, the lowest since October 2021.

There are 324,802 active cases in the country with 2,525 patients hospitalized. Of those, 1,123 are in serious condition. Currently, 40,404 Israelis are in quarantine, including 626 doctors and 1373 nurses. 

Thus far, 683,727 Israelis have been vaccinated with four doses, 4,452,487 with three, 6,109,763 with two, and 6,694,481 have received one shot.

Israel has reported 3,337,574 cases, including 9,370 deaths, since the outbreak of the pandemic in March 2020.

Meanwhile, officials at the World Health Organization's Eastern Mediterranean Regional Office reported on Wednesday that Middle Eastern countries have seen a rise in coronavirus infections in the last six weeks due to low vaccination rates. 

Reported COVID-19 cases rose to a daily average of 110,000 in the past six weeks, while average daily deaths rose to 345 in the last three weeks, WHO regional director Ahmed Al-Mandhari said. 

According to Rana Hajjeh, director of program management, more than 35% of the region's population is fully vaccinated. But one quarter of the countries have not yet reached 10% vaccination coverage.

The WHO's Eastern Mediterranean region comprises the Middle East, Egypt, Somalia, Sudan, Djibouti, and Afghanistan, among others.

In other news, researchers in Hungary have discovered an early version of COVID-19 in samples from a Chinese biotechnology firm that appears to have been grown in a laboratory, according to a report by The Telegraph on Wednesday, lending weight to claims that the virus may have been engineered in a lab and accidentally leaked out.

The scientists made the discovery by accident when examining genetic data from soil samples collected from Antarctica in late 2018 and early 2019.

According to The Telegraph, the variant has mutations that bridge the gap between bat coronavirus and the earliest Wuhan strain, suggesting it may be an ancestral version of the virus. 

The samples were sent to Sangon Biotech in Shanghai for sequencing in December 2019, where they became contaminated with a previously unknown variant of COVID-19, the paper said. 

Chinese scientists – including the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the suspected location for the leak – often used Sangon Biotech for sequencing. 

Although the exact date at which the DNA extraction took place is unknown, scientists say that if it took place in December 2019, the virus could be the ancestor of the original human Wuhan strain.

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In related news, Sweden scrapped almost all of its few pandemic restrictions on Wednesday and stopped most testing for COVID.

The moves came even as the pressure on the healthcare systems remained high and some scientists begged for more patience in fighting the disease.

Sweden's government, which throughout the pandemic has opted against lockdowns in favor of a voluntary approach, announced last week it would scrap the remaining restrictions — effectively declaring the pandemic over — as vaccines and the less deadly Omicron variant have cushioned severe cases and deaths.

"As we know this pandemic, I would say it's over," Health Minister Lena Hallengren told daily Dagens Nyheter. "It's not over, but as we know it in terms of quick changes and restrictions it is," she said, adding that COVID would no longer be classified as a danger to society.

As of Wednesday, bars and restaurants will be allowed to stay open after 11 p.m. again with no limits on the number of guests. Limits for larger indoor venues were also lifted, as was the use of vaccine passes.

Sweden follows Scandinavian neighbor Denmark in removing most COVID restrictions. Denmark last week became one of the first European Union countries to remove most restrictions, saying that COVID was no longer considered "a socially critical disease."

i24NEWS contributed to this report.

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A third Chinese city has locked down its residents because of a COVID-19 outbreak, raising the number confined to their homes in China to about 20 million people.

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The lockdown of Anyang, home to 5.5 million people, was announced late Monday after two cases of the Omicron variant were reported. Residents are not allowed to go out and stores have been ordered shut except those selling necessities.

Another 13 million people have been locked down in Xi'an for nearly three weeks, and 1.1 million more in Yuzhou for more than a week. It wasn't clear how long the lockdown of Anyang would last, as it was announced as a measure to facilitate mass testing of residents, which is standard procedure in China's strategy of identifying and isolating infected people as quickly as possible.

The lockdowns are the broadest since the shutting down of Wuhan and most of the rest of Hubei province in early 2020 at the start of the pandemic. Since then, China's approach has evolved into one of targeting smaller areas hit by outbreaks for lockdowns.

The approach of the Winter Olympics, which open Feb. 4 in Beijing, and the emergence of Omicron have brought back citywide lockdowns in a bid to snuff out outbreaks and prevent them from spreading to other parts of China.

A Beijing Olympics official responsible for disease control, Huang Chun, said organizers are counting on the cooperation of athletes and officials to prevent an outbreak that could affect participation.

"If the mass cluster transmission happens, it will impact the Games and the schedule for sure," Huang said. "The worst scenario, if it happens, is independent of man's will, so we leave our options open."

In Hong Kong, city leader Carrie Lam announced the closure of kindergartens and primary schools after infections were reported in students. Schools are to close by Friday and remain shut until at least the Lunar New Year holiday in the first week of February.

The semiautonomous Chinese city has tightened pandemic-related restrictions in recent days after discovering the Omicron variant had spread beyond people arriving from overseas.

The Anyang Omicron cases are believed to be linked to two other cases found Saturday in Tianjin. It appears to be the first time Omicron has spread in mainland China beyond people who arrived from abroad and their immediate contacts.

Anyang is an important archeological site, the ancient capital of the Shang dynasty and where the earliest Chinese writing has been found on what are called oracle bones.
The city said that non-essential vehicles are banned from streets in a lockdown notice shared online by state media late Monday. The number of cases is still relatively low, with 58 new ones confirmed from the start of Monday to 8 a.m. Tuesday morning.

Tianjin, a major port that is less than an hour from Beijing by high-speed rail, has locked down only affected areas as it carries out mass testing. As of noon Tuesday, 97 people had tested positive in the city of 14 million people: 49 with symptoms, 15 without symptoms and 33 awaiting further verification.

Xi'an and Yuzhou are both battling the delta variant and neither has reported any Omicron cases.

More than 2,000 people have been infected in Xi'an in China's largest outbreak since the initial one in Wuhan. The ancient capital is a popular tourist stop that is home to the Terracotta Warriors ruins and also a Samsung computer chip factory.

Authorities have credited the lockdown with curtailing the spread, though it disrupted lives and emergency medical treatment for some. The city reported 13 new cases in the latest 24 hour period, down from more than a hundred a day at the peak of the outbreak.

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The coronavirus reproduction rate, which kept subsiding in Israel for over a month, has risen back to 1, the Health Ministry reported Friday morning. Of the 71,082 Israelis who were screened for the virus on Thursday, 467 (0.71%) tested positive. 

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There are currently 5,215 active cases in the country with 173 patients hospitalized. Of those, 126 are in serious condition. 

Thus far, 4,038,711 Israelis have been fully inoculated, 5,761,459 have received two shots and 6,263,415 have been vaccinated with one dose. 

Israel has reported 1,339,531 cases, including 8,154 deaths, since the outbreak of the pandemic. 

Meanwhile, the ministry is poised to begin a national vaccination campaign for children ages five to 11. A shipment of Pfizer's special children's doses is expected to arrive at Ben-Gurion International Airport early next week. 

In related news, a study published in the New York Times and the prestigious Science journal on Thursday suggested that contrary to the World Health Organization's initial report, the first known patient to contract coronavirus was a vendor at a large seafood market in Wuhan, China. 

The WHO originally suggested patient zero was an accountant with the surname Chen who lived many miles from the site.

University of Arizona's Michael Worobey, who is considered a leading expert in tracing viruses, stumbled upon discrepancies when he was combing through the information that had previously been made public with regard to the origins of COVID-19. 

Worobey argued that the vendor's ties to the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market and a recent analysis of the earliest hospitalized patients' connections to the market suggest the pandemic might have begun there.

The analysis identified a woman named Wei Guixian, who worked at the market and developed symptoms around Dec. 11, 2019, as the first verified coronavirus patient. The WHO has also documented a case with a woman who got sick around this date and who had a connection to the market. 

By the end of December 2019, doctors at hospitals in Wuhan noticed an unusual rise in pneumonia cases in people who worked at the seafood market, which, according to the New York Times, was "a dank and poorly ventilated space where seafood, poultry, meat and wild animals were sold."

The research showed that the accountant that the WHO had identified as the first patient became ill on Dec. 16, not on Dec. 8 as was originally reported. According to Worobey, on Dec. 8 Chen had a dental appointment that had no connection to the coronavirus. 

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Two years before the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology planned on conducting a study in bat caves to release enhanced airborne coronavirus particles and infect the bats, thereby inoculating them against diseases that could jump to humans, leaked papers published by The Telegraph on Tuesday revealed. 

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The documents – confirmed as genuine by a former Trump administration official – were released by Drastic, a web-based investigation team that was established by researchers from across the world to investigate the origins of COVID-19. 

Although it is unclear whether researchers went ahead with the study, the papers do reveal that 18 months before the pandemic broke out in Wuhan – and from there spread to the rest of the world – scientists made a formal request to release "skin-penetrating nanoparticles ... of bat coronaviruses into cave bats," according to the paper. 

The team, which included scientists from the United States as well, planned on creating genetically enhanced viruses that could infect humans more easily and requested $14 million to fund the project. 

It should be noted that such studies are common and are often conducted to learn about virus capabilities in order to allow nations to prepare for possible outbreaks ahead of time. 

Nevertheless, the fact that researchers planned on releasing deliberately modified coronavirus particles adds credence to the belief that COVID-19 did not just mutate on its own from previous strains. 

Concerns that scientists in China might be responsible for the outbreak of the pandemic led to the Biden administration launching an investigation into the origins of COVID-19 several weeks ago. 

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A report on the origins of COVID-19 by a US government national laboratory concluded that the hypothesis of a virus leak from a Chinese lab in Wuhan is plausible and deserves further investigation, the Wall Street Journal said on Monday, citing people familiar with the classified document.

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The study was prepared in May 2020 by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and was referred to by the State Department when it conducted an inquiry into the pandemic's origins during the final months of the Trump administration, the Wall Street Journal report said.

Lawrence Livermore's assessment drew on a genomic analysis of the COVID-19 virus, the Wall Street Journal said.

US President Joe Biden said last month he had ordered aides to find answers to the origin of the virus.

US intelligence agencies are considering two likely scenarios – that the virus resulted from a laboratory accident or that it emerged from human contact with an infected animal – but they have not come to a conclusion, Biden said.

A still-classified US intelligence report circulated during former President Donald Trump's administration alleged that three researchers at China's Wuhan Institute of Virology became so ill in November 2019 that they sought hospital care, US government sources have said.

US officials have accused China of not being transparent about the virus' origins, a charge Beijing has denied.

Separately, Mike Ryan, a top World Health Organization official said on Monday the WHO cannot compel China to divulge more data on COVID-19's origins, while adding it will propose studies needed to take understanding of where the virus emerged to the "next level."

Last week, Biden's pandemic adviser, Dr. Anthony Fauci, told CNN: "I still believe the most likely origin is from an animal species to a human, but I keep an absolutely open mind that if there may be other origins of that, there may be another reason, it could have been a lab leak.

Fauci has been pilloried by conservative lawmakers and media outlets as a liar who misled the American people about the origins of COVID-19 to protect the Chinese government. Republican calls for his resignation have grown louder, as have demands for new investigations into the origins of the virus.

"Given what we know now, I don't know how anyone can have confidence that he should remain in a position of public trust and authority," said Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, a potential presidential hopeful who is calling for Fauci's resignation and a full congressional inquiry.

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Trump had to give one-year notice of the US withdrawal from the Geneva-based UN agency under a 1948 joint resolution of the US Congress, which also obliges Washington to pay financial support. The United States currently owes the WHO more than $200 million in assessed contributions, according to the WHO website.

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After more than 70 years of membership, the United States moved to quit the WHO after Trump accused it of becoming a puppet of China amid the coronavirus pandemic. The virus first emerged in China's Wuhan city late last year.

The WHO confirmed receiving notice from the United States of its intention. "We have received reports that the US has submitted formal notification to the UN secretary general that it is withdrawing from WHO effective 6 July 2021," a WHO spokesman said in an emailed statement. "We have no further information on this at this stage."

UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said that "the secretary general is in the process of verifying with the World Health Organization whether all the conditions for such withdrawal are met."

Trump had halted funding for the 194-member organization in April, then in a May 18 letter gave the WHO 30 days to commit to reforms. He announced the United States would quit less than two weeks later.

The WHO is an independent international body that works with the United Nations. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has said that the WHO is "absolutely critical to the world's efforts to win the war against COVID-19."

Trump has long scorned multilateralism as he focuses on an "America First" agenda. Since taking office, he has quit the UN Human Rights Council, the UN cultural agency, a global accord to tackle climate change, and the Iran nuclear deal. He has also cut funding for the UN population fund and the UN agency that aids Palestinian refugees.

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