A teenager receives a vaccination against the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Tel Aviv, Israel, January 24, 2021. REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun/File Photo

i24 News – Israeli health experts are urging calm amid an uptick in new coronavirus cases recorded across the country, stressing that most of the public has been vaccinated against the disease.

The development comes as the Israeli communities of Binyamina and Modi’in have seen infections among school children rise steadily since the start of the week.

In addition, Binyamina is now the first locale since early May to be designated “yellow” in the color-coded ranking system, after the number of people infected there rose from 45 to 80, according to the Times of Israel. 

On Monday, the Health Ministry announced that the virus transmission rate in Israel has risen to 1.77, with nearly 40% of new COVID-19 cases reportedly coming from abroad.

Public health experts say that the majority of new cases stem from the Delta variant of the disease, the origins of which have been traced back to India and is thought to have been transported back to Israel by travelers returning from abroad.

Of the 264 cases identified in the country since the beginning of June, 112 of them were people who flew into the country, according to the Times. 

Medical experts have assured government officials that the likelihood of a pandemic relapse and a return to severe restrictions remains low.

“I do not think we are facing a resurgence [of the virus],” Eran Segal, a computational biologist at the Weizmann Institute of Science, told Channel 12.

“Israel is largely immunized,” Ran Balicer, an epidemiologist who directs health policy planning for the Health Ministry, told Israeli media outlets on Sunday, “and the chances of a wave of serious illness and mortality are not what they were in January.”