Coronavirus: UAE records 2,616 new cases and four deaths

Another 982 people recovered over a 24-hour period

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The UAE reported 2,616 new coronavirus cases and 982 recoveries on Wednesday.

Officials said four people died in the past 24 hours from complications, the most deaths in one day since September 27.

The country has recorded 793,314 cases, 755,670 recoveries and 2,181 deaths since the first Covid-19 case was detected in the Emirates on January 29, 2020.

Widespread testing and tracing, stringent safety measures and a high vaccination rate have been credited for bringing down daily infections.

Cases have dropped since reaching close to 4,000 a day in January a year ago, and hit double figures before the emergence of the omicron variant.

An additional 300,893 tests were conducted over the 24-hour period, bringing the total number carried out since the beginning of the outbreak to more than 115 million.

Meanwhile, thousands of parents of Abu Dhabi private school pupils are being asked to have their say over the prospect of continuing remote learning until the end of the month.

The Department of Education and Knowledge issued a questionnaire on Monday to gauge opinion over preferred modes of teaching in the “coming few weeks".

Abu Dhabi's public and private schools switched to distance learning for the first two weeks of the new term from January 3 as a “precautionary measure to limit the spread of Covid-19 and maintain low infection rates in the emirate".

Pupils are scheduled to return to classrooms on Monday, January 17, with no extension of distance learning yet announced.

Updated: January 12, 2022, 10:13 AM