Bahrain and UAE have become the world’s first countries with populations over one million to hit a 50 per cent testing rate for COVID-19.
UAE has achieved coverage of 52.7 per cent and Bahrain 50.3 per cent of testing for their respective populations. Both UAE and Bahrain lead much of the world in testing for coronavirus and are currently ranked fifth and seventh, respectively, globally for tests per million population.
The milestone figures mean that scientists in the two Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) nations can more accurately analyse the spread of the pandemic with access to a greater level of infection data per capita than anywhere else in the world.
This comes after research suggested that the COVID-19 recovery rate in GCC countries was significantly higher than the global average.
An average of 75 per cent of patients have recovered in Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Oman — well above the global figure of 57 per cent.
With the global total of confirmed COVID-19 cases now standing at well over 19.8 million, and governments around the world bracing for a second wave of infections, the recovery rate has emerged as an important metric in measuring the effectiveness of responses to the pandemic by different countries.
