Israeli researcher: End of coronavirus peak only weeks away

Prof. Mark Last said that some 1,400 Israelis will likely die from the virus by the end of September * 9-10 times more people have been infected with the virus than the number of confirmed cases.

By MAAYAN JAFFE-HOFFMAN
Shoppers wear face masks and walk around a fashion shopping center in Ashdod, as restrictions over the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) ease around Israel, May 5, 2020. (photo credit: AMIR COHEN/REUTERS)
Shoppers wear face masks and walk around a fashion shopping center in Ashdod, as restrictions over the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) ease around Israel, May 5, 2020.
(photo credit: AMIR COHEN/REUTERS)
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Prof. Mark Last has predicted that the coronavirus infection rate in Israel will start to decline within the next three weeks, but that there could be 500 more dead here by the end of September.
Speaking to The Jerusalem Post, Last said a further lockdown is not necessary if the current restrictions are maintained and there are no unusual spreading events.
Last, a member of the Department of Software and Information Systems Engineering at BGU and director of the university’s Data Science Research Center, has been analyzing the data on COVID-19 attributed deaths reported by the Health Ministry on a daily basis since March. He also used data from serological screenings that estimate the total number of infected, rather than just confirmed cases.
He presented his findings at the AIME 2020: International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Medicine this past week.
“There are several indications that when the entire population is susceptible – meaning there is no immunity at all – but the population observes social distancing, then the reproduction number (R) is somewhere between 1.1 and 1.2 – closer to 1.2,” Last explained. The R number is how many people one infected person will infect.
He noted that from serological tests, Israel knows that nine to 10 times more people have been infected with the virus than the number of confirmed cases, which is around 112,000.
“We already have more than one million people with antibodies – with immunity,” he said.
According to Last, when about a sixth of the population becomes immune and people observe social distancing, then the reproduction rate will drop below 1 and therefore the number of infected people per day will also decline.
“We need to get about 1.5 million Israelis infected, which means 140,000 to 150,000 diagnosed cases,” the professor said. “That should only take a few more weeks.”
Last week, the Coronavirus National Information and Knowledge Center reported that, on average, around 1,300 people were being diagnosed with the virus per day. In recent days, new daily cases have hovered around 2,000.
Last said the combination of Health Ministry directives with herd immunity – when a large portion of the population is immune to a specific disease – could allow Israel to maintain its current economic activity and even potentially increase it.
“If we maintain the current restrictions, then my model predicts that we are at the end of this peak,” he said.
However, he cautioned that “if there is no unusual outbreak because of the return to school or trips to Uman or mass weddings, then the infection rate” may not start dropping.
“While another lockdown would certainly reduce infection rates, there is no need for it at the present time, since social and physical distancing is working to lower infection rates,” he added.
For a while, Last believed that his model might be slightly off: He was predicting more deaths than the Health Ministry was showing.
Then, earlier this month, the ministry released a correction, informing the public that it had inadvertently miscalculated and left out nearly 60 coronavirus-related deaths. Now, he said, his model’s predictions align exactly with the official death rate.
“This convinced me that the model is working,” he told the Post.
Last added that the model is only as good as the knowledge that exists about coronavirus. Currently, scientists believe that if people catch the virus, they will maintain that immunity for at least a year or two. However, if the duration of the immunity is shorter, this could also impact the model.
“We are heading in the right direction,” Last said, but warned that “it is important not to relax our restrictions or get overconfident.”