Israel’s Covid-19 mortality rate per capita surpasses US for 1st time since start of pandemic – army intelligence report

The Covid-19 per-capita death rate in Israel is higher than that of the United States for the first time since the outbreak of the pandemic, that country’s military intelligence reported on Tuesday.

Israel’s daily Covid-19-related death rate was 3.5 per million people compared to the US rate of 2.2 per million, according to task force, which is a part of the Israel Defense Forces Military Intelligence Directorate. The daily deaths per capita are calculated by the task force as an average of the previous week.

It also has a higher infection and mortality rate per million people than the US, France, Britain, Italy, Austria and South Korea, the report said.

Israel is known for conducting the highest number of coronavirus tests per capita, which takes it to the top spot for the positive test results rate – 14.8 percent. The country’s confirmed new cases remain the highest in the world, according to the report.

The Health Ministry said that the total number of deaths stood at 1,507 as of Tuesday morning. Since the start of the pandemic, Israel has had a total of 233,554 confirmed cases, with 65,025 active cases, 755 of them serious.  

Health Minister Yuli Edelstein said on Tuesday there is no chance that the ongoing three-week lockdown, imposed on September 13, will be lifted soon. “There is no scenario that in ten days we will lift everything and say ‘Everything is over,’” the minister told broadcaster Kan.

Speaking about the restrictions on Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu echoed the sentiment, warning that the current lockdown will last at least a month.

The global death toll from Covid-19 rose above  one million on Tuesday, prompting UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to claim that “our world has reached an agonizing milestone.”

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