A total of 7,813 new cases of the coronavirus were reported across Israel Thursday, the Health Ministry reported Friday morning.
The percentage of tests coming back positive increased from 5.47% on Wednesday to 6.31% of tests conducted Thursday, though this remains below the 7.22% recorded on Tuesday, and is part of a general downward trend from the recent high of 8.42% last week.
The infection coefficient R (for the reproduction of the virus) continues to fall, declining to 0.8 for the latest data available, from August 30th. That’s down from 0.83 a day earlier, and well below the 1.0 threshold indicating whether the pandemic is expanding or contracting.
There are now 79,799 known active cases of the virus across Israel, including 1,069 hospitalized COVID patients.
Of those, 672 are in serious condition, down from 684 on Thursday. Out of the 672 patients in serious condition, 245 are listed as critical, with 173 on respirators.
Thus far, a total of 7,319 coronavirus-related deaths have been reported since March 2020, including 15 on Thursday and three on Friday.