Three more Israelis were diagnosed with the novel coronavirus on Tuesday, bringing the total of those who are ill with the virus in Israel to 15.
Patients number 13 and 14 were both at the Red Pirate toy store, where the manager had recently returned from Italy – where he caught the virus – and then infected others.
Patient number 15 also recently returned from Italy, and was home in self-quarantine when he began to come down with symptoms of the illness and then was diagnosed.
All three patients are now hospitalized at Sheba Medical Center’s coronavirus quarantine unit.
Earlier in the day, the Israeli Health Ministry released an advisory saying that an investigation into one of the confirmed cases showed the patient visited the Tel Aviv derby soccer game in Bloomfield stadium in the city on February 24th.
“The people who were seated near Gate 8 on Feb. 24 between 8 pm and 10 pm need to be quarantined,” the ministry said. “In addition, all students and staff of Givat Brenner high school also need to enter quarantine as the patient is a 15 year old student who attended school without knowing that he was contagious.”
Negev-based Israeli physician Dr. Yuval Rabinovich told JewishPress.com on Wednesday evening that the advisory is not as alarming as it might seem at first glance.
“The restriction on soccer game audience was reconsidered and minimized to certain seats around the affected patient (and we do not really know if he was already a carrier when the event took place),” Rabinovich, who serves as medical director at the Leumit HMO (kupat holim) in Arad said in a response by Whatsapp chat. “So instead of quarantine for 5,500 people, only about 75 will have to stay at home.
“In any case, at this point gatherings of more than 5,000 people are forbidden, and that affects most important sports events.”
Rabinovich added that the government has prohibited health care workers from leaving Israel.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday at least 75 countries around the world have confirmed cases of the virus. “There is now a total of 92,943 reported cases of COVID-19 globally, and 3,160 deaths,” said WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the majority of which were reported outside China. Nearly 90 percent of those were cases from Italy, Iran and South Korea.
According to a coronavirus dashboard run by Johns Hopkins University, there were 138 confirmed cases of the virus in the United States by late Wednesday afternoon. The global death toll stood at 3,214, and the worldwide count of confirmed cases was 93,158 — figures that were higher than those provided by the World Health Organization just a few hours earlier.
In the United States, a 10th death was reported Wednesday afternoon by health officials in Washington State. Los Angeles County, meanwhile, declared a local health emergency as cases mounted in California with six new confirmed cases of the virus. Four new cases were confirmed in New York on Wednesday, bringing the total number in that state to six, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced; at present there are more than 100 confirmed cases of the COVID-19 novel coronavirus in the United States at this point.