Israel’s Health Ministry reported 2,557 new coronavirus cases on Sunday, a low number due to the limited amount of tests performed over the first day of Sukkos. However, the percentage of positive tests has decreased to 10.3%, down from about 15% last week, an indication that the current lockdown may be beginning to take effect.

There are currently 70,172 active virus cases, with 830 seriously ill patients, of whom 223 are ventilated. A total of 105 coronavirus patients passed away over Thursday, Friday, and Shabbos/Yom Tov, with 44 patients passing away on Thursday, the highest daily death tally since the start of the pandemic, 25 patients passing away on Friday, and 22 patients on Shabbos/Yom Tov.

Health Ministry Director-General Prof. Chezy Levy said that he is cautiously optimistic. “We still need to be careful but there seems to be a trend of a decrease in infection rate, both in the number of those who test positive and the percentage of those who test positive,” Levy told Kan News on Sunday.

“We have to wait several days to see if it’s a real trend. We still have high numbers but we haven’t seen the 7,000 we were seeing previously and this is a cause for optimism.”

However, a report by the IDF’s Coronavirus National Information and Knowledge Center on Sunday said that a longer period of time is needed to confirm a decrease in the infection rate, stating that the positive test rate is still high and is an indicator of a higher morbidity rate than actually detected.

Furthermore, computational biologist Eran Segal of Weizmann Institute said on Sunday on Channel 12 News that the infection rate is slowing down in some sectors but that the infection rate is Chareidi is still very high – at about 28% versus 10% in the general population and 13% in the Arab population.

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)