Drive-thru COVID tests in Ramla
Drive-thru COVID tests in RamlaYossi Aloni/Flash90

A total of 13 new cases of the coronavirus were diagnosed across Israel Saturday, according to data released by the Health Ministry Sunday morning. That’s down from 79 new cases diagnosed Friday and 93 cases on Thursday.

Just 0.1% of tests conducted Saturday came back positive, down 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 1,430 known active cases of the virus in Israel, down from 1,651 on Thursday, of which 173 are being treated in hospitals – down from 176 on Thursday.

Of those 173 hospitalizations, 102 patients are in serious condition. That is down from 107 seriously ill patients on Saturday, and marks the lowest number since July 7th of last year, when there were 93 patients in serious condition.

The infection coefficient held steady at 0.78 as of April 21st, 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 0.80 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 6,365, including one death recorded on Saturday. The week ending May 1st saw the fewest number of COVID-related deaths recorded since the week ending June 23rd, 2020.

Thus far, 5,405,523 Israelis have received at least one dose of the vaccine, or 58.13% of the population, with 54.79% of, or 5,094,785 people having received two doses.