Health

UAE reports another rise in new daily COVID-19 cases

The UAE has reported the highest number of daily coronavirus cases in six months as it recorded 1,846 infections on Tuesday.

The Ministry of Health said it had also also reported 632 new recoveries and one death related to the coronavirus.

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To date, there have been 754,911 COVID-19 individual infections in the country, and 2,160 deaths.

The country has not specified whether any of the new cases where of the omicron variant, though it announced that it reported its first case of the new, highly transmissible variant on December 1.

Cases in the Gulf country have been steadily rising at slow rates in recent months, but the last time the number of daily infections was this high was at the end of June when the UAE reported 2,184 cases on June 29.

The UAE remains one of the top countries in the world when it comes to vaccination rates and has managed to report low numbers of cases and deaths in recent months while remaining open to business.

It comes as officials in Abu Dhabi announced new border rules for those entering the emirate.

The Abu Dhabi Emergency, Crisis and Disasters Committee said that vaccinated people coming into Abu Dhabi must show the Al Hosn green pass, while those who have not been vaccinated must show a negative PCR test taken in the previous 96 hours.

The new rules were announced on Tuesday and will come into effect on Thursday.

The rules will come in addition to existing safety protocols, which include EDE scanners that aim to reduce the spread of COVID-19.

The technology screens for potential COVID-19 infection and provides immediate results. The scanners are operated at a distance and is effective for mass screening, such as at the entry to public locations.

The UAE on Tuesday also approved emergency use of Sinopharm’s protein-based COVID-19 vaccine and it will be available to the public as a booster dose starting January 2022, the health ministry said.

The vaccine will be produced and distributed by a joint venture between the UAE’s Group 42 and China National Biotec Group (CNBG), a unit of China National Pharmaceutical Group (Sinopharm), the ministry said in a statement on state media on Monday.

The approval came following a UAE-based study that included individuals who were previously vaccinated with two doses of Sinopharm CNBG’s inactivated vaccine, the ministry added.

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