According to updated figures from the Israeli Health Ministry, 1,719 people were diagnosed with Covid-19 in the last 24 hours, out of 69,778 tests administered. As such the positivity rate during this period was 2.5%.
Since the outbreak of the epidemic in early spring, 348,968 people have been confirmed as virus carriers; as of Wednesday morning, there are 14,905 active cases of the virus in the country.
558 coronavirus carriers are in hospital, and another 217 are in government-run coronavirus hotels. 310 people of those in hospital with a Covid-19 diagnosis are in serious condition, including 107 who are in critical condition. 113 people are on ventilators. A further 96 people are in moderate condition.
The death toll since the outbreak of the epidemic now stands at 2,932 people.
A recent attempt by the government to impose a night curfew across the country for the coming three weeks, including the festival of Hanukkah and the non-Jewish year’s end celebrations, apparently ran into legal problems and had to be abandoned. The National Security Council had been behind the curfew proposal, which was vehemently opposed by health experts including senior officials within the Health Ministry, who asserted that curfews would achieve virtually nothing beyond further eroding public confidence in the government’s handling of the crisis.
Indeed, a recent study that examined government policies across the world and their effect in bringing down the coronavirus mortality rate concluded that even full nationwide lockdown was not linked with any benefit in terms of coronavirus fatalities.