DUBAI, UAE – After opening for New Year’s parties, Dubai is now blamed by several countries for spreading the coronavirus abroad, even as questions revolve around the city-state’s ability to handle record increases in virus cases.
The government’s Dubai press office says the sheikh is doing everything he can to deal with the pandemic, although he has repeatedly refused to answer questions from the Associated Press about his hospital capacity.
“After a year of pandemic management, we can confidently say that the current situation is under control and we have our plans to increase any capacity in the health care system should a need increase,” he said.
However, Nasser al-Shaikh, the former head of finance in Dubai, offered another assessment on Twitter on Thursday and asked the authorities to take control of a number of cases in a spiral.
“Leadership bases its decisions on the team’s recommendations, the wrong recommendations that endanger human souls and negatively affect our society,” he wrote, adding that “our economy needs responsibility.”
Dubai, known for its carrier Emirates, the world’s tallest building and its beaches and bars, became one of the first travel destinations to be described as open for business in July.. The move has bled its tourism and real estate sectors after blockages and block heels cratered its economy.
As tourism resumed, the daily number of reported cases of coronavirus increased slowly, but remained largely stable until the fall.
But then came New Year’s Eve – a major attraction for travelers from countries otherwise closed to the virus who spent no face masks in bars and yachts. In the last 17 days, the United Arab Emirates as a whole has reported a record number of coronavirus cases a day, as lines at Dubai’s testing facilities grow.
In Israel, more than 900 travelers returning from Dubai have been infected with the coronavirus, according to the army, which monitors contacts. The returnees have created a chain of infections numbering more than 4,000 people, the Israeli army told the AP.
Tens of thousands of Israelis have gathered in the United Arab Emirates since the two countries normalized relations in September. The Israeli expert of the Ministry of Health, Dr. Sharon Alroy-Preis, was quoted by Channel 13 TV as complaining in a call with other officials that a few weeks of travel were more deadly than decades without relations with the Arab nation.
Since the end of December, Israel has asked those coming from the UAE to enter a two-week quarantine. Subsequently, Israel closed its main international airport until the end of the month due to increasing cases.
In the UK, tabloids have spread photos of bikini-clad British influencers spending time in Dubai as the country struggles with blockades trying to control the virus. The UK closed a travel corridor to Dubai in mid-January that allowed travelers to quarantine over what has been described as a significant acceleration in the number of cases imported from the UAE.
“International travel, right now, should only happen if absolutely necessary,” Health Secretary Matt Hancock told the BBC this week. “No parties in Paris or weekends in Dubai. This is not active and, in most cases, it is against the law. “
Meanwhile, the mutated strains of the coronavirus have been linked back to Dubai. The United Kingdom on Friday imposed a travel ban banning direct flights to the United Arab Emirates on the spread of a South African variant of the coronavirus.
Denmark has already discovered a traveler from Dubai who tested positive for the South African version, the first such discovery there. Like the UK, Danish stars have similarly traveled to Dubai for the New Year.
In the Philippines, health officials say they discovered a British strain infecting a Filipino who made a business trip to Dubai on December 27th. He returned to the Philippines on January 7 and gave positive results.
He “had no exposure to a confirmed case before they left for Dubai,” the Philippine Department of Health said. During that period, the Philippine authorities discovered at least 16 other cases of the British version, including two from Lebanon.
As it reported nearly 4,000 cases of coronavirus daily, Dubai fired the head of its government health agency without explanation. He stopped live entertainment at bars, stopped non-essential operations, limited wedding sizes and ordered gyms to increase the space between those who train. He also now needs coronavirus testing for everyone who flies to his airport.
The United Arab Emirates has bolstered its hopes for mass vaccinations, with Abu Dhabi distributing a Chinese vaccine by Sinopharm and Dubai offering Pfizer-BioNTech inoculation. The United Arab Emirates says it has so far given 2.8 million doses, ranking it among the top countries in the world.
However, people, including al-Shaikh, are now questioning Dubai’s ability to cope with growing cases. Hospitals contacted by the AP largely sent questions to the Dubai government, which has repeatedly declined to comment. The German Saudi Hospital in Dubai responded by saying that “it hopes to read the real news”, without elaborating.
Dr. Santosh Kumar Sharma, medical director of the NMC Royal Hospital in Dubai, told the AP that “the number of cases (is) increasing” with more than half of its beds occupied by coronavirus patients.
The World Health Organization said that before the pandemic, the UAE had nearly 13,250 hospital beds for a country of more than 9 million people. He said Dubai and the United Arab Emirates had built field hospitals in the midst of the pandemic, with about 5,000 beds, with Abu Dhabi building more.
But Dubai closed its 3,000-bed field hospital in July – the same day it reopened for tourism. Both Dubai and the United Arab Emirates Ministry of Health are now advertising for nurses on Instagram.
“The sad thing is that great efforts have been made since January 2020 for us to come and undermine them with our own hands,” al-Shaikh wrote. “What makes things worse is the lack of transparency.”
However, this came after the United Arab Emirates’ autocratic government told those concerned earlier this week to “refrain from questioning the efforts of all those who worked to counter the pandemic.”
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Associated Press writers Josef Federman in Jerusalem and Isabel DeBre in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, contributed to the report.