The coronavirus is unlikely to have leaked from a Chinese lab and is more likely to have jumped to humans from an animal, a World Health Organization team has concluded, an expert said Tuesday as the group wrapped up a visit to explore the origins of the virus. The Wuhan Institute of Virology in central China has collected extensive virus samples, leading to allegations that it may have caused the original outbreak by leaking the virus into the surrounding community. China has strongly rejected that possibility and has promoted other theories for the virus’s origins.

Dozens of asylum seekers and foreign workers in the Israeli city of Tel Aviv lined up to receive their first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine on Tuesday as part of an initiative to inoculate the city’s foreign nationals. Tel Aviv city hall and the Sourasky Medical Center started administering vaccines free of charge to the city’s foreign nationals, many of whom are undocumented asylum seekers. On its first day of operation, the vaccination center in southern Tel Aviv, which is home to a large migrant community, dispensed doses to dozens of foreign nationals who lined up outside the building. Posters provided information in English, Tigrinya, Russian and Arabic. Recipients included foreign workers from the Philippines, Moldova, and Nigeria, as well as Sudanese and Eritrean asylum seekers.

Israel’s Health Ministry warned on Monday that due to the spike in seriously ill coronavirus patients in recent weeks, Israel’s supply of ECMO machines is almost depleted, Ynet reported. Health Ministry sources warned that if the spike continues, health professionals will be forced to choose who will be attached to the life-saving machines. “We’re not there yet,” a ministry source said,” but it can happen in the future. We never thought we would have to treat over 40 ECMO patients at the same time but here we are. We’re now reaching our limit.” A total of 41 coronavirus patients in critical condition were attached to ECMO machines last week alone.

Brazilian marketing executive Eduardo Menga is extra cautious when it comes to his health. During the pandemic, he consulted a slew of doctors to ensure he was in good shape and uprooted his family from Rio de Janeiro to a quiet city in the countryside where he works remotely. His wife Bianca Rinaldi, an actress, hasn’t worked since March. Menga and Rinaldi are among a minority of Brazilians who will pay for a COVID-19 vaccine if an association of private clinics can close a deal to bring 5 million shots to Latin America’s most unequal country. President Jair Bolsonaro, under fire for his government’s handling of the pandemic, has promised not to interfere.

The tiny glass vaccine vials are delivered to Miami’s largest hospital and immediately whisked to a secret location, where they are placed inside a padlocked freezer with a digital thermometer that reads minus 76 degrees Celsius (minus 105 F). An armed guard watches outside the door. The pharmacy staff at Jackson Health System often gets short notice on how many doses are coming — sometimes as little as 24 hours. As soon as the doses arrive, the pressure builds to administer them quickly, but the timing is complicated. The staff can thaw out only as much COVID-19 vaccine as the hospital can administer that same day.

Israel’s Health Ministry confirmed 7,761 new coronavirus cases in the previous 24 hours on Tuesday morning, with tests showing a positivity rate of 8.8%, raising the total number of virus cases since the start of the pandemic to 700,479. There are currently 1,088 virus patients hospitalized in serious condition, with 306 ventilated. The death toll has risen to 5,192. The number of children diagnosed with the coronavirus has risen by 400%, according to a Kan News report on Monday. The high infection rate in children and teens is of great concern to health officials, who fear that reopening the educational system will have dire consequences. Health officials told ministers that reopening schools could spur a rapid coronavirus outbreak among children and teens.

Russia issued updated statistics Monday on coronavirus-linked deaths which showed that 162,429 people with COVID-19 died last year, a number far higher than previously reported by government officials. The state statistics agency, Rosstat, released its figures for December on Monday, updating its count of coronavirus-linked deaths that includes cases where the virus wasn’t the main cause of death and where the virus was suspected but not confirmed. Out of more than 162,000 deaths between April and December, 86,498 were directly caused by confirmed COVID-19; 17,470 other deaths were likely caused by the virus, but it wasn’t confirmed by a test.

Likud MK Dovid Bitan, who was released from Sheba hospital last week after being seriously ill with the coronavirus for two months, recited HaGomel on Monday. Bitan and his wife went to a Chabad shul in Rishon L’Tzion, where he donned tefillin and recited HaGomel in a special ceremony with a minyan. “The doctors told I was hovering between life and death,” Bitan said in an interview with Channel 12 last week. “I’m still in a processs of rehabiliation that will take about two to three months.” Bitan also said that he lost 27 kilograms while he was ill.

Dr. Yonatan Georgi, a doctor at the ICU unit in Sheba Hospital in Tel HaShomer took several precious moments from his overloaded schedule to convey important messages to the public regarding the coronavirus, Kikar H’Shabbos reported. “I’m a doctor in the ICU treating seriously ill coronavirus patients from the beginning of the pandemic,” he said. “I don’t usually speak to the media but I have a number of important points to convey since this is a matter of saving lives and also due to the burnout healthcare professionals are enduring due to the tremendous emotional and physical resources needed to care for coronavirus patients.” “Perhaps the most important message is that of obesity as an underlying risk factor.

Mortuary owner Brian Simmons has been making more trips to homes to pick up bodies to be cremated and embalmed since the pandemic hit. With COVID-19 devastating communities in Missouri, his two-person crews regularly arrive at homes in the Springfield area and remove bodies of people who decided to die at home rather than spend their final days in a nursing home or hospital where family visitations were prohibited during the pandemic. He understands all too well why people are choosing to die at home: His own 49-year-old daughter succumbed to the coronavirus just before Christmas at a Springfield hospital, where the family only got phone updates as her condition deteriorated. “The separation part is really rough, rough,” said Simmons.