Rate of positive virus tests climbs to 12.3% as 2,157 more cases diagnosed

The percentage of positive coronavirus tests continues to climb, with the Health Ministry reporting Monday that of the 18,414 test processed the previous day, 12.3 percent confirmed subjects as being infected.

The percentage of positive tests has risen steadily over the past week, up from some 6% during the last week of August. At the time when a national lockdown imposed earlier this year was rolled back, positive virus test results were below 1%.

A total of 2,157 new virus cases were identified Sunday, and another 561 from midnight to Monday morning, bringing the total number of people diagnosed in the country since the start of the pandemic to 131,970, with 27,099 active patients.

Three new deaths took the national toll to 1,022 Tuesday morning, while 103,849 have recovered.

Of those sick, 476 are in serious condition, 137 of them on ventilators. There are 162 patients with moderate symptoms and the rest have light or no symptoms of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.

Amid an ongoing second wave of infections, Israel’s death toll passed the 1,000 mark over the weekend. Just over a month ago, on August 6, the death toll stood at 565.

On Sunday night, the government pulled back from its plans to impose lockdowns on some cities with especially high infection rates, instead imposing nighttime curfews on some 40 towns during which non-essential businesses will have to close. Schools in those places will be shut indefinitely.

The decision to backtrack from the plans for local lockdowns came after heavy pressure from the ultra-Orthodox community, with several ultra-Orthodox towns on the roster of hot zones which were to have been shuttered.

Officials insist a nationwide lockdown is still a possibility, especially over the upcoming High Holidays. A key cabinet discussion on the matter is expected on Thursday.

The transition government imposed harsh lockdown measures during the initial wave of the virus, managing to bring daily case numbers down to a couple of dozen a day in May. The country swiftly reopened, and since then has seen the pandemic spread at an unprecedented pace, currently making it one of the countries with the highest daily infections per capita in the world. Officials have blamed the swift reopening of schools and other services, a weak contact tracing system and dwindling public will to maintain guidelines for the spike over the last several months.

Around 90 doctors and researchers have signed an open letter warning against a general closure, among them Nobel Prize in Chemistry winner Michael Levitt and the directors of the emergency wards or coronavirus wards of several hospitals.

In the letter, the experts warn that a lockdown is only a temporary measure that does not stop the virus but only delays it, thereby drawing out the damage caused by the pandemic and putting more people in danger. They recommend a model tried out by Sweden, which avoided a lockdown and imposed only a minimal suite of restrictions in a bid to develop herd immunity, which occurs when enough of a population develops antibodies that infection rates drop to insignificant levels.

That model would appear to run against recommendations by experts at the World Health Organization and Israel’s top health officials.