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The Dubai government press service says the emirate is doing everything it can to control the pandemic and has plans to help the healthcare system in the event of a sudden increase in the number of infected people. However, the government did not provide the AP with data on the occupation of hospital beds, and the country’s former Finance Minister Nasser al-Shaikh also criticized the government’s decisions on Twitter.
With its tallest buildings, manicured beaches and luxury, Dubai has become one of the first destinations to announce its opening in July. As a result of the quarantine measures, the affected economies were clamoring to recover income from the tourism and real estate sectors.
With the influx of tourism, the number of new cases of new coronavirus detected daily increased slowly, but remained stable in autumn. Then came the new year.
During the New Year, Dubai became the most popular tourist destination. Other countries announced new restrictions at the time, and Dubai’s bars and yachts made it possible to party without masks. The number of cases in the UAE over the past 17 days is now at a record high, and queues are forming in testing labs in Dubai.
More than 900 travelers who have contracted the coronavirus in Dubai have recently returned to Israel, the Israeli military has tracked the contacts. The returnees became even more infected: the entire chain already reaches more than 1.4 thousand. persons.
Tens of thousands of Israelis have traveled to the United Arab Emirates in recent months when the countries normalized their relations in September. Israeli Health Minister Sharon Alroy-Preis complained that the few weeks of travel were more devastating than decades of lack of relations with the UAE.
In late December, Israel began demanding two weeks of self-isolation from arrivals from the United Arab Emirates. Subsequently, the country closed its main international airport due to an increase in the number of cases.
The British tabloid press shows photos of British “influencers” on vacation in Dubai. In mid-January, the UK closed the travel corridor with Dubai, forcing returnees to require self-isolation due to a significant increase in COVID-19 imports from the UAE.
“International travel should not take place now unless absolutely necessary,” UK Health Minister Matt Hancock said this week. – There are no parties in Paris or weekends in Dubai. In many cases, it is even against the law. “
Meanwhile, the mutated strain of COVID-19, which is spreading from South Africa, has also been linked to Dubai. On Friday, the UK announced a travel ban that bans direct flights to / from the UAE.
Denmark has already identified a traveler who returned from Dubai infected with a new strain of PAR. Like the British, the Danes traveled to Dubai in flight during the New Year.
The Philippines announced that it had found that in Dubai on January 7. A British strain of COVID-19 has been identified for the returnee.
In Dubai, as the number of new daily cases approached 4,000, the head of the government health agency was fired without explanation. The emirate has cut live performances in bars, suspended unnecessary operations in hospitals, limited the number of wedding attendees and instructed sports clubs to ensure greater distance between athletes. Now everyone coming to the UAE must also take a test.
The UAE has high hopes for mass vaccination: Abu Dhabi is already vaccinated with the Chinese Sinopharm vaccine, Dubai, Pfizer-BioNTech. UAE announces that 2.8 million have already been injected. Dosage: the vaccination process here is one of the fastest in the world.
Still, more and more people, including the former minister, question Dubai’s ability to handle the pandemic. The AP tried to find out from hospitals about bed occupancy and the situation in them, but most of them referred journalists to the Dubai government press service. And this doesn’t answer questions about health care system readiness.
According to the World Health Organization, before the pandemic there were almost 13,250 hospital beds (more than 9 million in the country). Dubai and the UAE’s Northern Emirates built field hospitals with more than 5,000 people during the pandemic. beds, Abu Dhabi, even more.
However, Dubai closed its field hospital with 3,000 in July. beds – the same day it opened to tourists.
“The saddest thing is that a lot has been done since 2020 and now we are destroying everything ourselves,” said former minister Nasser al-Shaikh. “It is worse because of the lack of transparency.”
The UAE’s autocratic government said this week that stakeholders “should refrain from questioning the efforts of those working to contain the pandemic.”
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