Tel Aviv, Mar 17 (IANS): Israel will not lift more Covid-19 restrictions amid rising infections "in several locations around the world", the Prime Minister's Office said in a statement.

Following a consultation meeting with health officials, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz decided that the mask mandate will not be lifted, but the measure will be reviewed again in April, Xinhua news agency quoted the statement as saying.

In addition, the installation of air filter systems in classrooms will be stepped up and the government will continue the vaccination campaign calling on the entire population over the age of 12 to receive the third dose of the Covid jab, the statement said.

The announcement came about two weeks after Israel lifted many of the coronavirus restrictions.

On March 1, the government cancelled the Green Pass scheme which allowed entry to public venues only to vaccinated people.

On Wednesday, the Health Ministry announced the detection of a new coronavirus strain, a combined strain of the original Omicron lineage BA.1 and its subvariant BA.2, from two in-bound passengers at the Ben Gurion International Airport.

In the evening, the Ministry reported that 6,332 new coronavirus cases were confirmed over the past day, bringing the total number of infections in the 9.2-million-population country to 3,737,352.