UAE logs record rise in coronavirus infections

DUBAI－The United Arab Emirates on Wednesday reported its highest daily number of coronavirus infections since the start of the pandemic at 1,083 new cases.

The Gulf Arab state has seen cases surge over the past seven weeks from 164 cases on Aug 3, a trend authorities have attributed to people not following social distancing measures.

The UAE has been scaling up the number of tests carried out daily and said 103,199 tests were carried out on Tuesday of around 9.9 million people. The country has recorded 87,530 infections and 406 deaths so far.

The UAE last week approved a China-developed COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use, six weeks after human trials in the country started.

"The vaccine will be available to our first line of defense heroes who are at the highest risk of contracting the virus," the UAE's National Emergency Crisis and Disaster Management Authority, or NCEMA, tweeted.

The drug is an inactivated vaccine developed by the China National Pharmaceutical Group, or Sinopharm. A Phase III trial of the vaccine kicked off in the Gulf country on July 16, with a local official saying the results have been positive.

The vaccine had been tested on 31,000 volunteers, including 1,000 suffering from chronic diseases, and no complications occurred after vaccination, according to the country's top crisis authority.

"Clinical trials for the third phase are continuing under the strict supervision of medical teams, while following all measures to control the quality, safety and efficacy of the vaccine," said the NCEMA.

"The results of clinical trials in our country are moving on the right path, with all tests being successful so far," the authority said.

Sinopharm said it hopes its vaccine will be approved as early as the end of the year, expecting the antibodies from its vaccine could last between one and three years.

Xinhua - Agencies