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A death in southern Israel Tuesday which was labelled Israel’s first confirmed fatality related to the Omicron variant was actually not linked with the new variant, the Israeli Health Ministry said Wednesday morning.
On Tuesday, a 68-year-old man who had received two shots of the Pfizer vaccine and suffered from serious pre-existing conditions died after testing positive for SARS-Cov-2, officials at Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba announced.
Hospital officials emphasized that the primary cause of death was the man’s pre-existing health conditions.
The man was initially said to have been infected with the Omicron variant, with media outlets calling his death the first Omicron-related fatality in Israel.
On Wednesday, however, the Health Ministry announced that the man’s lab results indicated that he had been carrying the Delta variant, not the Omicron variant.
The Israeli government’s Coronavirus Cabinet voted Tuesday evening to impose distance learning on students in towns with higher infection rates, citing the spread of the Omicron variant, despite initial data from South Africa and elsewhere suggesting the variant may be less virulent that previous strains.
Earlier, the Health Ministry banned travel to the United States, Canada, and a number of other countries, due to the relatively high levels of the Omicron variant in those countries.