Abu Dhabi on Saturday announced that attendance at offices run by government and semi-government entities will be limited to 30 percent capacity from Sunday.
The move, approved by the Department of Government Support, will bolster precautionary measures implemented in the emirate and protect the health of employees and their families amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
In a series of tweets, the Department also approved remote working for all jobs that could be delivered fully from outside the workplace.
It said all employees older than 60 or with chronic diseases and weak immunity and people of determination will also work remotely.
It added that it has approved a compulsory PCR test every week for all employees.
Volunteers in vaccine clinical trials and those vaccinated as part of national vaccination programmes who have active icons (gold star or letter E) on Alhosn app are exempted from the weekly test.
The announcement came as the UAE’s Ministry of Health and Prevention (MoHAP) said that it conducted 150,706 additional Covid-19 tests over the past 24 hours, with 3,276 new infections, bringing the total number of recorded cases in the UAE to 323,402.
MoHAP also announced 12 deaths, bringing the total number of deaths in the country to 914 while an additional 4,041 individuals have fully recovered, bringing the total number of recoveries to 301,081.
The ministry also said on Saturday that 193,187 doses of the Covid-19 vaccine were given in the past 24 hours, with total doses now standing at 4,201,347 with a rate of vaccine distribution of 42.48 doses per 100 people.
In an article written for Arabian Business last month, Justin McGuire, the co-founder of international recruitment firm DMCG Global, said remote work is likely to continue in some form after the pandemic passes.
“Let’s assume for a moment that there is widespread distribution of vaccines and that all our economies are well on the way to recovery. Even in that world, employees and job seekers will expect some level of remote work, I am sure of it,” he said.
“One big lesson from the pandemic is that many employees don’t need to be physically present in the office to do their work. A number of companies plan to make work from home permanent, including Twitter, Facebook and Tata Consulting Services,” he added.
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