Officials blame the spike on the public’s general indifference to social distancing and other coronavirus health guidelines.

By Aaron Sull, World Israel News

Israel’s coronavirus cases and fatalities soared over the past 24 hours with more than 200 new infections and one death recorded Friday.

The number of coronavirus cases in Israel stood at 3,019 with 34 in serious condition and an even 300 deaths recorded. The renewed outbreak significantly struck the school system, with 460 students and faculty members catching the deadly disease, according to the Health Ministry.

As a result, the Education Ministry has been forced to shut down 165 schools and sent 25,517 students and staff members into quarantine. If the virus continues to plague schools, the cabinet agreed on Thursday that it might take further action by shutting down all middle and high schools nationwide.

Officials are blaming the spike on the public’s general indifference to social distancing and other coronavirus stipulations. Israelis have been repeatedly shown congregating at beaches and in clubs, failing to wear masks or stay 2 meters (6 feet) away from each other.

“The spike in cases is because we did not adhere to the rules,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said during a televised address on Thursday. “I say it directly and honestly: We did not. I ask you to do what I am talking about more strongly in the coming days.”

“If it continues, we will restore restrictions, and the economy will stop,” he said.

On Tuesday, Netanyahu ordered stepped-up enforcement of social distancing rules, including giving city officials the power to join police in enforcing mask-wearing and rules against large gatherings. A day earlier, the government decided to freeze plans for a further easing of restrictions that would have allowed trains, cinemas, and arts venues to open.

The government doesn’t want to reimpose a lockdown, but it has set three conditions in which it will do so: if the number of those hospitalized in serious condition reaches 250; if there are more than 100 cases a day outside of virus hot spots and if the rate of new infections starts to double in under 10 days.

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“Women may simply have better immune systems than men,” says Prof. Paul Hunter.

By Aaron Sull, World Israel News

As the coronavirus pandemic continues to sweep the world, new research suggests men are more likely to die from the deadly virus than women.

The research published last month by China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention found that while the infection rate among men and women is relatively the same, the death rate among men is 2.8 percent compared with 1.7 percent for women.

Numerous experts have weighed in on the findings.

According to Prof. Paul Hunter, from the University of East Anglia, women may simply have better immune systems than men.

“Women have intrinsically different immune responses to men. Women are more likely to suffer from auto-immune diseases, and there is good evidence that women produce better antibodies to vaccines against flu,” he told the BBC last week.

Prof. Michal Linial, a computational biologist at Hebrew University, said a woman’s immune system functions better than a man’s because it always has to prepared for the “foreign” aspects associated with pregnancy.

“In pregnancy, the woman’s body has to avoid a negative response to the development inside of it of an entire organism, half of whose DNA is totally foreign. Various mechanisms have to activate to suppress the immune reaction of the body so that it doesn’t act against the embryo,” she said.

Environmental factors may also have played into the skewed results.

According to researchers cited by Business Insider, considering the data was extrapolated from a study of only Chinese people, it is safe to assume that the majority of the men in the study were smokers.

It is well documented that over 50 percent of Chinese men smoke compared to 2 percent of Chinese women.

Lack of proper hygiene may also have contributed in some way to the results, said Sabra Klein, a scientist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health,

“It has been well documented that men are less likely to wash their hands and use soap than women,” said Klein as quoted by the Advisory Board, a team of experts who research and predict global health trends.

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