A medical staff member attends a patient suffering from the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in a ward at Beilinson hospital in Petah Tikva, Israel August 18, 2021. REUTERS/Ammar Awad

i24 News – New daily infections of Covid-19 in Israel spiked again in the last 24 hours, hitting almost 11,000 new cases, data from the Health Ministry showed.

It brings the total number of active cases of infection in the country to 83,542.

Recently, the number of new infections has fluctuated, decreasing and increasing on different days.

There was a slight fall in the number of seriously sick individuals, down to 719. Of these patients 217 were in a critical condition, 172 of them on ventilators.

Of the 151,772 people tested for the virus yesterday, 7.65% screened as positive.

On Monday, Israel’s coronavirus cabinet approved new restrictions timed for the Jewish High Holidays — including limiting the number of worshipers able to attend the Western Wall to 8,000.

Masks will be mandated at the prayer plaza, with ushers overseeing worshippers’ compliance.

Additionally, the “green certificate” vaccine pass was expanded to include health, education and welfare employees with possible expansion to other areas of the economy to be considered at a later date.

Israel is in the middle of a vaccine booster shot drive, with 2,157,299 people injected with the Pfizer vaccine for a third time, in order to counter the falling effectiveness of doses administered in January and February.