COVID-19 vaccine
COVID-19 vaccineiStock

A total of 129 new cases of the coronavirus were diagnosed across Israel Thursday, according to data released by the Health Ministry Friday morning. That’s up from 114 new cases diagnosed Wednesday.

Approximately 0.4% of tests conducted Thursday came back positive, up from 0.2% the day before. That is the lowest level recorded since March 4th last year, when the percentage of tests coming back positive was 0.0%.

There are now just 1,897 known active cases of the virus in Israel, down from 2,037 on Thursday, of which 257 are being treated in hospitals – up from 256 on Thursday.

Of those 257 hospitalizations, 160 patients are in serious condition. That is down from 161 seriously ill patients on Thursday, and marks the lowest number since July 12th of last year, when there were 152 patients in serious condition.

The infection coefficient rose to 0.82 as of April 12th, the latest date for which information on the coefficient is available due to the 10-day delay between the date of actual infection and test results. That is up from 0.76 the day before, but remains far below the 1.0 R reproduction rate, which marks the level of spread needed for the virus to maintain a stable number of infections in a population.

The infection coefficient last topped 1.0 on February 24th, when it hit 1.02, before falling sharply.

The total number of coronavirus-related fatalities now stands at 6,346, including one death Thursday. That is the lowest level of daily COVID-related fatalities since June 21st, 2020.

Thus far, 5,374,276 Israelis have received at least one dose of the vaccine, or 57.79% of the population, with 53.83% of, or 5,005,418 people having received two doses.