DUBAI, United Arab Emirates: Dubai appears to finally be on the road to overcoming the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the head of the city’s COVID-19 Command and Control Centre.
Dr. Amer Ahmad Sharif, command center’s chief noted that infection rate in the last three weeks has considerably fallen while hospital capacity is not anymore overwhelmed by a huge number of COVID-19 patients.
The announcement came more than a month after the UAE moved to ease COVID-19 restrictions and slowly started re-activating the economy with malls and restaurants coming back to life and hotel guidelines issued as preparations for re-opening.
Officials said there are approximately 500,000 Filipinos in Dubai, of which, the Philippine Consulate said, 50 Filipinos have died in the past months due to COVID-19
Meantime, in a media advisory issued this week, the government’s official information arm, Emirates News Agency (ENA), said these promising COVID results came on the heels of sustained precautionary measures and cooperation of both the public and private sectors, which helped Dubai achieve marked progress in curbing the spread of the virus.
The command center noted a decline in the number of identified cases and people with COVID-19 symptoms visiting hospitals in the last few weeks.
Dr. Sharif said there are a number of hospitals in Dubai that now do not have any COVID-19 cases while most government and private hospitals in the city have resumed diagnostic and treatment services, with their capacity not anymore under pressure due to COVID-19 cases.
Dr. Sharif said the results indicate Dubai is moving steadily towards overcoming the pandemic.
The command center’s head also said an analysis of indicators in the last three months showed a significant decline in COVID-19 cases. The rate of infections in the last three weeks, he said, has fallen considerably while the rate of recoveries has increased, according to ENA, which added that the number of cases requiring hospitalization likewise saw a decline.
With all these promising developments, Dr. Sharif nonetheless stressed on the need for the public to continue following guidelines issued by local and federal authorities and adherance to preventive measures such as physical distancing and use of sanitizers.
According to latest updates by the Ministry of Health and Prevention (MoHAP), there were 43,752 COVID-19 cases across the UAE as of today, Friday June 19, following the detection of 388 new coronavirus infections.
MoHAP also noted that an additional 704 individuals have fully recovered from Covid19, bringing the total number of recoveries to 30,241, while three new deaths were reported, bringing the number of fatalities at 298.
Noticeably, the number of new COVID-19 infections has declined to the range of some 300 in the pasts days from the usual daily average of 500 detections.
There were 346 new cases on June 16, 2020; 342 on June 15 and 304 on June 14, MoHAP said.
Just last week on June 7, there were 540 new cases detected; 568 on June 8; 528 on June 9; and 603 on June 10. There were 513 on June 12; and 491 on June 13, still according to MoHAP as reported by the Emirates News Agency (WAM).
The UAE relatively also has the lowest COVID-19 fatalities with 298 of the 43,752 total cases.
(Main picture is that of Dr. Amer Ahmad Sharif, head of COVID-19 Command and Control Centre. Photo courtesy of WAM)
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