Israel world #1 in daily COVID cases per capita; exposed schoolkids won’t quarantine
Starting next Thursday, students to take antigen tests twice a week at home and present negative results when going to school; PM says ‘millions’ of home tests to be handed out
By TOI staff 20 January 2022, 9:22 pm
High school students take a mathematics exam in a school in Yehud, on January 20, 2022. (Yossi Zeliger/Flash90)
Israel is leading the world in new daily COVID-19 cases per capita, data showed Thursday.
Speaking to Channel 12 news, a top health expert advising the government cited figures from Our World in Data showing 0.6 percent of the population was testing positive per day.
The numbers comparing each country’s seven-day running average put Israel at the top, Prof. Eran Segal of The Weizmann Institute said.
But Segal noted it was likely that Israel was not truly the country with the highest infection rate. Rather, he attributed the figures to Israel being a leading country in the number of tests performed each day, relative to its population size.
Israel is followed in the highest daily cases worldwide ranking by Mongolia, Peru, Canada and Georgia.