Israel confirms record number of daily coronavirus cases

Israel on Tuesday confirmed a record 10,021 new coronavirus cases, the Health Ministry said, as the country continues to vaccinate its population at breakneck speed.

The record comes ahead of a meeting by Israel's cabinet to vote on whether to extend the current national lockdown that is initially scheduled to end on Friday.

All schools and kindergartens are currently closed, with the exception of special education.

Shopping centres are also shut and restaurants are only allowed to offer delivery services. People may not visit others' homes outside of their nuclear family and travel beyond 1 kilometre from one's home is also restricted, with some exceptions.

Meanwhile, Israel's vaccination campaign continues at full steam.

Health Minister Yuli Edelstein announced a new one-day vaccination record, tweeting that 186,000 people were vaccinated on Monday.

Of those, 114,000 people received their first dose and 72,000 received their second dose. So far, 2.2 million people in Israel have received their first dose, and 422,000 have received both doses.

The country began its inoculation campaign on December 20, using the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine. It has since also received the Moderna vaccine but most of the country is currently being vaccinated with the former.

On Tuesday, the country's Health Maintenance Organizations lowered the age of those eligible to receive the vaccine to 40 and above.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that everyone in Israel over the age of 16 will have the opportunity to be vaccinated by March, when the country faces its fourth general election in two years.

Israel is considered a world leader with its rapid vaccination campaign. But critics have said that the agreement between Israel and pharmaceutical company Pfizer represents an invasion of Israelis' privacy.

The deal commits Israel to informing Pfizer weekly about the course of the pandemic.

Tehilla Shwartz Altshuler, senior fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute, said on Monday that the deal constituted a study of humans and required authorization from the Helsinki Committee in charge of approving medical research on human subjects.

However, the head of the committee, Professor Eitan Friedman, told media on Tuesday that the vaccination campaign is not "an experiment on human beings."

He reiterated that the vaccines have been authorized for clinical use. "There is no element of experimentation here, it is the collection of vital information on a clinical basis and it does not need the approval of the Helsinki Committee," he told Israeli news site ynet.

He added that his committee seeks to ensure that no additional information is transferred abroad that could endanger the autonomy of Israeli citizens.

Meanwhile, a group of specialist doctors have written a position paper stressing the importance of vaccinating pregnant women against Covid-19.

The paper, published by the Israeli Health Ministry on Tuesday, was penned in response to reports that people were hesitant about being vaccinated due to claims it could affect their fertility.

"There is no scientific basis or facts that indicate that fertility can be harmed as a result of the vaccination with the recognized vaccines," the letter states.

The doctors stressed that catching the coronavirus could "be harmful during pregnancy and can cause more serious illness in pregnant women and can cause premature birth."

The paper was written by the National Council for Obstetrics and Gynaecology Neonatology and Genetics, and the Israeli Society of Obstetrics and Gynaecology.

In recent days, there have been multiple reports of pregnant women hospitalized with the virus.