UAE reports fewest Covid-19 cases in a year

The United Arab Emirates reported fewer than 400 coronavirus cases for the first time in more than a year, with just two weeks to go for Dubai Expo – the biggest in-person event since the pandemic began…reports Asian Lite News

The Gulf nation reported 391 cases on Sunday. Infections have been dropping steadily in the country, which has rolled out one of the fastest vaccination campaigns in the world.

Abu Dhabi on Sunday abolished a requirement for visitors coming from other parts of the country to show a Covid-19 negative test as infection rate in the UAE capital fell to 0.2% of total tests.

The decline in cases will come as a boost for Dubai, one of the UAE’s seven emirates, as it gears up to host the Expo event that starts in October. The exhibition is expected to attract 25 million visits over six months.

Visitors to the event will now be required to provide vaccination certificates or get tested to enter the event, under new rules issued days after organizers said inoculations weren’t needed.

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The Expo, initially set for October 2020, was meant to attract millions of visitors and provide a boost to the local economy. But as the pandemic hit, halting the global economy, the government postponed the event and reconsidered its targets.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Health and Prevention has announced that 33,216 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine were given in the past 24 hours. The total number of doses provided up to today stands at 19,445,872 with a rate of vaccine distribution of 196.61 doses per 100 people.

This is in line with the Ministry’s plan to provide the COVID-19 vaccine to all members of society and efforts to reach acquired immunity resulting from the vaccination, which will help reduce the number of cases and control the virus.

Meanwhile, more than 228.11 million people have been reported to be infected by the novel coronavirus globally and 4,891,537 have died on Sunday.

Infections have been reported in more than 210 countries and territories since the first cases were identified in China in December 2019.