Rapid mobilisation of health resources backed by community trust enabled a national response to the pandemic that will shape future emergency plans, a leading government official said at Arab Health in Dubai.
Dr Farida Al Hosani, executive director of infection diseases at Abu Dhabi Public Health Centre, said the UAE set new standards in how to react to a pandemic and plan for future crises.
“Our strength in the UAE was healthcare readiness, adapting technologies, unified communication, effective collaboration and our emergency response system,” said Dr Al Hosani at a Covid-19 special edition conference at the health exhibition.
“Trust between the community and government was crucial.
“The combined response allowed us to handle the pandemic in the best possible way that was recognised internationally as being one of the top global responses.”
Dr Al Hosani showed how measures such as the first lockdown and remote learning in March 2020 through to the vaccine roll-out aligned with national case numbers.
Expanding surveillance teams, heat maps and deployment of field medical teams to covid hot spots like Naif in Dubai and Al Mussafah in Abu Dhabi quelled localised outbreaks.
Lab testing on a mass scale was critical to managing new cases, while an effective home isolation programme encouraged support for those forced into quarantine to prevent further infections.
“Testing has saved the country, with a rapid expansion of capacity from around 2,000 a day in March 2020 to hundreds of thousands of tests today,” said Dr Al Hosani, the government’s official covid spokesperson.
“Our work with the public sector that understood the government strategy in expanding the testing programmes was hugely important, with 20 drive though testing centres opened across the country.
“The huge number of volunteers that helped with the vaccine trials in August helped the community understand that we had to wait for the vaccine, which was also important.”
Preparing the UAE for a national vaccine roll-out allowed health authorities to wrestle back control from the pandemic, so many could return to work and relative normality.
The launch of human trials with an inactive virus in August 2020 attracted more than 42,000 volunteers from 125 nationalities across six test centres.
A vaccine programme for frontline workers, the elderly and most vulnerable continued in September with a plan to protect 50 per cent of eligible target populations by the end of the first quarter of 2021.
That was followed by a phase three trial of the Russian-made Sputnik V vaccine in January, with 1000 more volunteers coming forward.
Dr Al Hosani said the international support offered by the UAE also played an important role in attacking the virus head on.
Aid included 4.25 million PCR test kits and 2,060 ventilators shipped around the world on 183 medical flights to 134 countries.
While mobile hospitals were established in Sudan, Guinea Conakry, Mauritania and Jordan and a clinic in Turkmenistan, the UAE aided the transport of two field hospitals from Norway and Belgium to Ghana and Ethiopia at a cost of $4 million.
“It is very hard to say that one measure worked better than another, but so far 2021 has been very different to 2020,” said Dr Al Hosani.
“Due to the vaccines and what we have learned in effective treatments, the severity of cases generally are much less than in the first wave.”
