Posted on 01/08/22
| News Source: i24
Number of seriously ill patients jumps to 172
Israel recorded 18,780 new Covid cases on Friday and 28,889 throughout the weekend, according to an update to the Health Ministry's website on Saturday evening.
The 200 thousand tests taken on Friday saw Israel break its record number of daily cases, set the previous day.
The number of patients with serious symptoms rose to 172, including 49 on lung ventilation.
Overall there are upward of 100 thousand active virus cases in Israel.
The death toll was at 8,259.
The dramatic hike in morbidity is driven by the highly contagious omicron variant.
Prime Minister Naftali Bennett warned last week that Israel could reach 50,000 daily cases at the height of the wave.
"Our initial data, which is not yet entirely accurate, points to seven to eight people hospitalized for 1,000 infected, two of whom will fall severely ill or worse," Sharon Alroy-Preis, the ministry's head of public health, said last week of the omicron strand.
"This is a significant change from delta which saw far more - at least 10 severely ill for every 1,000 infections," she said.