From Ian:
Corona death toll hits 172 amid drop in number of severe cases
Israeli scientist: Two-thirds of the way toward COVID-19 vaccine
Corona death toll hits 172 amid drop in number of severe cases
The Health Ministry reported on Sunday morning that the death toll from the coronavirus was now 172 people, with 13,362 confirmed cases in the country.
As of 9 a.m. Sunday, the number of patients in mild condition was 9,378, and the number of patients in moderate condition was 140. The Health Ministry also noted that 156 people were in critical condition, a 6.6% drop compared to 24 hours ago. Additionally, 109 patients were on ventilators, a 7.6% decline from the previous day's figures.
The Ministry also presented its figures on the morbidity rates per town in Israel. Bnei Brak, with 2,307 confirmed cases, tops the list, followed by the Arab village of Deir el-Asad with 89 confirmed cases out of just 12,435 residents and then Kohav Ya'akov in Judea and Samaria, with 59 confirmed cases out of just 8,602 residents.
Hadassah Ein Kerem Medical Center in Jerusalem said in a statement on Sunday that two female corona patients died overnight Saturday, including the youngest patient to date to succumb to the coronavirus in Israel, a 29-year-old woman who was already suffering from terminal cancer.
The medical staff was in continuous contact with her relatives, who were prohibited from visiting the hospital to bid her farewell. After her passing, her family members said the Kadish prayer – traditionally recited in memory of the dead – via a video call facilitated by the medical staff.
We're working to support the Ministry of Health & local authorities in responding to the #COVID19 pandemic.
— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) April 19, 2020
These are the latest numbers: pic.twitter.com/9UbxRCrVSa
Israeli scientist: Two-thirds of the way toward COVID-19 vaccine
Prof. Jonathan Gershoni from Tel Aviv University's (TAU) School of Molecular Cell Biology and Biotechnology told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday afternoon that the work his laboratory is doing on the corona family of viruses is "two-thirds of the way" through the process of developing a vaccine for COVID-19.New method of testing for coronavirus in under a minute, by Israeli tech
Gershoni, who was recently granted a patent by the United States Patent and Trademark Office for his vaccine design for the coronavirus – after studying the family of viruses for 15 years – explained that the vaccine intends to target the virus's Receptor Binding Motif (RBM), a critical weak point which allows the virus to attach itself and infect a target cell.
The RBM is a small feature of the virus's "spike" protein, meaning that the virus uses many different proteins to replicate and invade cells, but the "spike" protein is the "major surface protein that it uses to bind to a receptor – another protein that acts like a doorway into a human cell," according to TAU.
Once this protein binds to the cell receptor of a human cell, the viral membrane fuses with that of the human cell, which allows the genome, or genetic blueprint of the virus to enter human cells and begin infection.
"The idea is to recreate, to reconstitute, to construct an RBM of COVID-19 virus and use it as the vaccine," he told the Post. "That is to say, you would inject a small 50 amino-acid sequence and it would allow our immune system to focus on it and create antibodies that would directly target the virus at its weak spot."
Experimentation of a new method using a breathing device that could potentially diagnose the coronavirus in under a minute has been approved by Institutional Review Board, otherwise known as the Helsinki committee.
The new method is based off a breathing machine developed by Israeli companies Next-Gen and Scentech Medical, and is similar to the breathalyzer machine that police use to find ethanol contained in the blood. Using a similar method to that of the breathalyzer, patients breath into the device, which should be able to distinguish between thousands of gas compounds in the breath, isolating that associated with the virus, allowing for a quick and simple diagnosis.
"A quick and simple diagnostic test can be done anywhere, from airports, hotels, tourist sites, and soccer stadiums," said Shulam Lapidot, chairman of Next-Gen. "Our success will help the community and the economy get back to full activity and to their normal routines as quickly as possible."
Next-Gen using the technology of Scentech Medical, which deals with the identification of volatile compounds, teamed up with Meir Medical Center in order to conduct the experiment, testing the new coronavirus-detecting breathing device. The trial will be conducted on coronavirus patients who have varying severity levels of the disease.
The companies explain that this type of examination has several benefits, including facing several difficulties that current medical teams face in diagnosing the virus. One of such examples being the possibility to quickly identify and diagnose asymptomatic patients, along with patients in the early stages disease, so as to enable more efficient quarantine methods.
Furthermore, the new breathing device can significantly reduce the amount of time to achieve results, being able to give a diagnosis in minutes in comparison to the current method which takes up to two days, allowing for an increase in the reliability of results.



















