Israel counts 9,000 COVID-19 dead in painful milestone

Two years into the pandemic, the country counts 9,013 coronavirus fatalities, 86 of which were added to the tally over the past 24; daily cases top 40,000 for 24th day running

Yaron Druckman|

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Israel's COVID-19 death toll topped the 9,000 mark, the Health Ministry reported Thursday morning, as the country continues to reel under a massive coronavirus outbreak induced by the Omicron variant.
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Fatalities have reached 9,013 since the first case of coronavirus was detected in Israel in March 2020, 86 more than reported Wednesday morning, but some patients may have passed away earlier and were not included in previous tallies due to reporting backlogs.
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Chevra Kadisha workers in hazmat suits prepare bodies of COVID-19 victims for burial 
(Photo: EPA)
It took Israel six months to reach 1,000 coronavirus deaths, doing so on September 2, 2020. That figure doubled within a month on October 11 of that year. The country counted its 3,000th virus victim on December 12; 4000th on January 16, 2021; 5000th on February 4 and 6,000th on March 14.
Thanks to the country's early vaccine rollout, it did not reach the next millennium mark until August 27, 2021. However, the Delta variant again led to a high death count, and in less than two months, on October 18 last year, another thousand Israelis passed away due to complications of the virus.
Amid an unprecedented surge in infections and after introducing a third and a fourth vaccine booster shot, Israel reported the 9,000th coronavirus victim three and a half months later.
Meanwhile, the ministry reported that 58,422 Israelis have tested positive for the pathogen on Sunday, marking the 24th successive day with over 40,000 new cases reported.
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Health worker walking through a coronavirus ward at Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem 
(Photo: Alex Kolomoisky)
Israel has reported over 3,000,000 confirmed coronavirus cases over two years of the pandemic, however, that figure includes the Israelis who caught the virus more than once.
Israel’s coronavirus reproduction rate (R-number) ticked down again, standing at 0.9, which would mean that the outbreak is waning, albeit slowly.
The reproduction number, which indicates how many people each infected person passes the virus on to, has remained below 1 for the past several days.
Israeli hospitals were treating 1,096 COVID-19 patients in serious condition, 258 of whom were connected to ventilators.