UAE eases travel curbs for participants of Expo 2020
The UAE aviation authorities said on Thursday that Expo 2020 related people would be allowed to enter the country despite the ban on entry from certain countries.
The General Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA), according to one circular that was issued, rendered the following category of persons originating from restricted countries eligible to enter the UAE, that is Expo 2020 international participants, exhibitors and personnel sponsored by Expo 2020 organisers.
The current COVID-19 pandemic is causing the United Arab Emirates to issue new restrictions on flights and passengers, according to the GCAA.
The UAE government is closely monitoring the situation and will provide more information and clarifications when necessary.
The UAE Ministry of Health and Prevention (MOHAP) has announced that it conducted 164,110 additional COVID-19 tests and detected 1,547 new cases.
MOHAP also announced three deaths due to COVID-19 complications.
The Ministry also noted that an additional 1,519 individuals had fully recovered from COVID-19.
More than half of all European adults are now fully vaccinated, the European Union ( EU) said Thursday, as several countries across Europe and Asia batle fresh outbreaks blamed on the fast-spreading Delta variant.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said cases in her country were rising “exponentially”, while in Japan the delayed Olympics Games were set to open with almost no spectators and with a blanket of Covid rules in place.
And the spotlight once again turned to the virus’ origins ater the WHO called for an audit of the Chinese lab at the heart of speculations about where the virus first emerged, sparking a fiery response from Beijing.
More than four million people have now died from the virus since it first emerged in December 2019, and though vaccines are picking up globally, Delta is fuelling a rise in infections and prompting governments to re-impose anti-virus measures to avoid dreaded new waves.
The EU said on Thursday that 200 million Europeans had been fully vaccinated, more than half of the adult population but still short of a 70 percent target set for the summer.
The fresh data came as Merkel urged more Germans to get vaccinated, sounding the alarm over a fresh spike in cases in Germany.
Indonesia has converted nearly its entire oxygen production to medical use just to meet the demand from COVID-19 patients struggling to breathe. Overflowing hospitals in Malaysia had to resort to treating patients on the floor. And in Myanmar’s largest city, graveyard workers have been laboring day and night to keep up with the grim demand for new cremations and burials.
Images of bodies burning in open-air pyres during the peak of the pandemic in India horrified the world in May, but in the last two weeks the three Southeast Asian nations have now all surpassed India’s peak per capita death rate as a new coronavirus wave, fueled by the virulent delta variant, tightens its grip on the region.
The Indian government rejected on Thursday recent studies suggesting that millions of people have died in the country from COVID-19, several times the official toll of almost 420,000.
It said in a statement however that several Indian states were now “reconciling” their data ater dealing with a spike in cases in April and May.
On Tuesday a study by US research group the Center for Global Development suggested anywhere from 3.4 million to 4.7 million people had died in India, between eight and 11 times the official number.
China on Thursday accused the World Health Organisation of “arrogance” and a “disrespect for common sense” as it proposed a second phase investigation into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, media reports said.
The WHO had, in March, concluded in a report that a laboratory leak was “extremely unlikely.” Undermining the report, WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, last week, stated that it was premature on the global health body’s part to rule out a potential link between the Covid pandemic and a laboratory leak. He asked China to be more transparent on the issue of data sharing.
In response, National Health Commission Deputy Minister Zeng Yixin stated that “clear conclusions from the first study should not be repeatedly investigated”, the South China Morning Post reported.
Expo 2020 participants, exhibitors and personnel sponsored by organisers from countries on travel ban list would be allowed entry into the UAE: GCAA; UAE reports 1,547 new cases, 3 deaths; half of Europeans vaccinated.