Some 20 cases of a new sub variant that developed from the original Omicron variant have been discovered in Israel, Kan reported on Thursday evening. The sub variant, known as BA2.

Over the past 10 days, Israel has continuously hit a new record of virus carriers, increasing from 12,000 a day to 48,000, with experts believing that the real number of those infected is likely to be much higher.

The number of serious patients, while still limited, has also started to increase. There were 283 patients on Thursday compared with 136 a week earlier. In addition, 284 new patients were classified as serious over the previous seven days, marking an increase of 189% over the previous week.