Number of serious COVID cases tops 1,000, even as Omicron wave appears to ebb

The number of patients seriously ill with COVID-19 in Israel has surpassed 1,000 for the first time since last February, according to Health Ministry data published Saturday.

According to the ministry, with 169 new serious cases hospitalized on Saturday, the overall number of patients in serious condition stood at 1,010.

And yet the rising number of severe cases came as other indicators pointed to the massive Omicron wave starting to finally decline. The rate of serious cases tends to lag behind new infections due to the time it takes for patients to deteriorate.

Speaking with Channel 12 news on Saturday, Prof. Eran Segal of the Weizmann Institute — a top government adviser on the pandemic — predicted serious cases could reach 1,150 before they begin to fall.

The ministry reported 53,020 new coronavirus cases confirmed on Friday, down from an all-time high of some 85,000 earlier last week. But testing is more limited on weekends.

The R-value, measuring how many people on average every infected person passes the virus on to, declined to 1.01 on Saturday. Officials believe it could drop below 1 next week. Any number over 1 indicates infections are rising, while a figure below that signals that an outbreak is abating.

Last month, the R-value shot up to 2.12, but has since been on the decline. The transmission rate is based on data from 10 days earlier.

Segal assessed last week that the fast-spreading Omicron variant could mark the end of the pandemic as it has been experienced over the past two years.

“There may be additional variants. But the more time passes, the better our tools to fight it,” he said. “We have medicines now. We have the vaccines. There’ll be natural immunity of perhaps over half the populace in Israel and other countries. All those things — one can hope — will help to end the coronavirus, at least as the pandemic we have come to know in the past two years.”

Saturday’s data showed 444,886 were actively infected with COVID-19, and of them, 2,495 were hospitalized.

The death toll stood at 8,657, with at least 41 new fatalities recorded over the weekend and revised data adding dozens more who died in recent weeks. According to ministry data, 206 have died from COVID-19 complications in the past week — marking an 80.7% increase over the previous week.

Meanwhile, Justice Minister Gideon Sa’ar on Saturday called to scrap the so-called Green Pass certificate, which limits entry to certain venues and activities to those with proof of immunization or negative tests.

The Green Pass regulations are currently set to expire on Tuesday. Finance Minister Avigdor Liberman has also called to end the measure.

“The violation of [civil] liberties and livelihoods was justified as long as it had an understandable epidemiological purpose, but this is no longer the case,” Sa’ar said on Twitter.

Health Ministry Director General Nachman Ash has said the ministry is “looking into various possibilities, whether to extend [the pass] for a certain period or to extend it at all.”

A Health Ministry advisory panel also recommended scrapping the regulations, saying the Omicron variant’s transmissibility and ability to infect vaccinated people made the pass largely irrelevant.