Photographer: Giuseppe Cacace / AFP / Getty Images
Photographer: Giuseppe Cacace / AFP / Getty Images
Dubai hopes that one of the world’s fastest vaccination programs and rapid testing technology will help achieve the goal of hosting the Expo 2020 event this year, after the coronavirus pandemic forced a delay.
The government is confident that the inoculation programs will be successful enough to open the Expo on October 1 and says it is still possible that 25 million people will visit the city for the six-month event.
The exhibition, which Dubai has been preparing for a decade, is set to be one of the biggest global events this year and generate billions of dollars for the government. The revival of the virus in recent months has complicated planning and led to questions about whether it will need to be reduced.
Tokyo, which will host the Olympics in July, faces similar problems, although authorities insist the event will go on.
“It is not yet realistic to change your target number yet, because your factors are very fluid,” Expo 2020 CEO Reem Al Hashimi said in an interview with Bloomberg TV. “We launched vaccinations in the UAE very aggressively, but so have many other countries around the world.”
The United Arab Emirates, of which Dubai is a part, has administered almost 1.8 million doses of vaccine and has the second highest vaccination rate per 100 people globally after Israel. The country has also led the way in per capita testing, and Al Hashimi said there will be a test facility on site.
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“We hope that in October, things should be better than where we were when we should have been postpones the event last April, “said Al Hashimi.
Dubai is following its Expo 2020 hosting schedule, which is delayed this year
Dubai is also revisiting the Expo 2020 heritage as a commercial and residential space. The pandemic has exacerbated a decline in property in the emirate, the center of business in the Middle East, where oversupply and economic uncertainty have lowered prices for years.
“We will not harp anything if it no longer makes sense,” Al Hashimi said. However, due to the distinctive character of the site, “we do not completely exclude it. We take parts of it where it makes sense, but we also redesign what the overall programming of the site’s legacy would look like. ”
She said that the future of the site will continue to be “infiltrated in technology, because this is a 5G site”.
Expo 2020 will opens up sustainability pavilion for the public from January 22 to April 10. The opening of the new pavilion is a “teaser for the domestic public” as well as the international one about the idea of Dubai’s sustainability, said Al Hashimi.
– With the assistance of Desley Humphrey