JERUSALEM, JANUARY 02

Israel's prime minister is warning that the country will soon see tens of thousands of new coronavirus cases a day.

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett spoke at the start of the weekly Cabinet meeting in Jerusalem. He said that despite rolling out more than 4.2 million coronavirus booster shots to the country's population of 9.3 million since July, "the storm is coming to us these very days."

Daily cases in Israel have risen in the past two weeks from around 700 to the more than 4,000 reported on Sunday.

"These are numbers that the world has not known, and that we also haven't known," Bennett said.

He said that the government's aim is "to allow the economy to function as much as possible, while protecting the most vulnerable among us."

Israel has recorded at least 8,244 deaths from coronavirus since the start of the pandemic.