The Health Ministry reported Wednesday evening that 53 senior citizens who passed away from COVID-19 in July and August were not included previously in the national death toll.
According to the Health Ministry, the discrepancy stems from private geriatric institutions reporting their deceased separately from state-run institutions. The ministry is investigating whether there were similar cases of unreported deaths and reported no other discrepancies before the month of July.
Health Minister Yuli Edelstein instructed ministry officials to conduct an in-depth reexamination of coronavirus fatalities and report the findings to him within a week.
Health Ministry Director-General Prof. Hezi Levy ordered to consolidate death reports from all medical institutions - including geriatric institutions - into a uniform source.
Another ministry source suggested some geriatric institutions may have listed another reason of death, even though the deceased were found to be positive for coronavirus.
Israel's virus-related fatalities stood at 719 Wednesday morning but were then updated to 772 after the Health Ministry's announcement. The death toll currently stands at 781, with nine more added in the past 24 hours.
The data show that 1,111 new cases of coronavirus have been detected since midnight out of 18,607 tests, meaning 6% of all tests yielded a positive result.
There are currently 793 patients hospitalized with coronavirus, 398 of them are in a serious condition and 118 are on ventilators.
The number of coronavirus carriers remains steady and stands at just under 24,000.