Israel is likely to reach the peak of the current COVID wave within the next week or two, Prof. Eran Segal of the Weizmann Institute of Science predicted Wednesday.
Speaking with Galei Tzahal Wednesday morning, Segal said the number of new daily SARS-CoV-2 infections in Israel is already above 100,000, or roughly three times the number of new documented cases per day.
“We have already crossed the threshold of 100,000 new infections per day,” said Segal. “During this whole pandemic, we knew that there are more people getting infected than diagnosed. We undercount the real number by a factor of about three or four.”
“One out of every 8 to 10 people will get infected at the peak of the current wave. People in high-risk groups need to be protected.”
Segal said that barring significant changes to government policy, the current wave would likely peak in the coming weeks.
“Since we don’t expect any dramatic changes in policy, within a week or two we should be at the peak of infections. Given the rate of increase and the fact that the Omicron variant is less virulent, I hope that we won’t also reach a new peak in terms of seriously ill patients, which we saw previously.”