UAE reports 196 Covid-19 cases, 301 recoveries, no deaths
The UAE Ministry of Health and Prevention on Thursday reported 196 cases of the Covid-19 coronavirus, along with 301 recoveries and no deaths.
Total active cases stand at 13,874. The new cases were detected through 203,719 additional tests.
The total number of cases in UAE as on May 5 are 899,637, while total recoveries stand at 883,461. The death toll now stands at 2,302.
Over 156.5 million PCR tests have been conducted in the country so far. People are 1,000 times more likely to get Covid-19 from the airborne viral particles they breathe than from the surfaces they touch, according to a study.
The researchers from the University of Michigan (U-M) in the US collected air and surface samples during an environmental surveillance programme from August 2020 until April 2021 on their campus.
“The risk of surface transmission was 1,000 times lower than airborne transmission,” said Chuanwu Xi, a professor at U-M’s School of Public Health.
The Omicron variant of the SARS-CoV2 virus is intrinsically as severe as previous variants, unlike assumptions made in previous studies that it was more transmissible but less severe, another large study in the United States has found.
“We found that the risks of hospitalization and mortality were nearly identical between periods,” said four scientists who conducted the study based on records of 130,000 Covid-19 patients, referring to times in the past two years when different variants were dominant across the world.
Meanwhile, Pfizer executives said Tuesday they are confident of strong demand for the company's Covid-19 antiviral treatment amid easing pandemic rules as the big drugmaker reported another round of strong earnings.
The US pharmaceutical giant, reporting surging firstquarter profits based on a big jump in revenues from its Covid-19 vaccine, said its Paxlovid treatment for the virus would be a valuable means for governments to limit the severity of outbreaks as they ease social distancing and masking rules.