Israel over the past 24 hours recorded a sharp increase in the number of coronavirus patients needing mechanical ventilation, health officials said Monday morning.
The Health Ministry said 263 patients are in serious condition, of whom 114 are ventilated, an increase of 30 since the same figure reported Sunday evening. The official death toll now stands at 2,864.
The ministry said 985 people tested positive for COVID-19 on Saturday after 39,774 tests had been conducted, putting the contagion rate at 2.5%, slightly down from 3.3% infection rate reported a day earlier.
One of the ventilated patients is a teenager, while the rest of the patients are aged 40 and over. Six of them are in their 40s, while at least three are over the age of 90.
The Coronavirus National Information and Knowledge Center said there has been an overall increase in the spread of the infection over the past week, which cannot be simply explained by increased testing.
Last week, in the three days preceding the weekend there were more than a thousand new cases per day, while in the last two weeks there has also been an increase in the contagion rate.
According to the center, over the past week 50.4% of newly-infected infected appear to be from the Arab sector, 42.4% from the general sector and 7.1% from the ultra-Orthodox. The data published Sunday also showed the rate of positive tests in the Arab sector is 6.83%, in the ultra-Orthodox sector 2.63% and in the general sector 1.13%.