DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) – After opening up to New Year’s celebrators, Dubai is now blamed by several countries for spreading the coronavirus abroad, even as questions circulate about the city-state’s ability to handle reported tackle record peaks in virus cases.
The government’s Dubai Media Office says the Sheikh is doing everything he can to deal with the pandemic, although it has repeatedly declined to answer questions from The Associated Press about hospital capacity.
“After a year of pandemic containment, we can confidently say that the current situation is under control and that we have plans to increase the capacity of the healthcare system if needed,” he said.
However, Nasser al-Shaikh, the former Dubai financial director, offered another review on Twitter on Thursday, asking authorities to take control of a spiraling caseload.
“The leadership bases its decisions on the team’s recommendations, the wrong recommendations that endanger human souls and negatively impact our society,” he wrote, adding that “our economy requires accountability.”
Dubai, known for its long-haul carrier Emirates, the world’s tallest building and its beaches and bars, became one of the first travel destinations to describe itself as open for business in July. The move counteracted the bleeding of the crucial tourism and real estate sectors after lockdowns and curfews cratered the economy.
As tourism rebooted, the number of coronavirus cases reported daily grew slowly, but remained largely stable during the fall.
But then came New Year’s Eve – a big draw for travelers from countries otherwise closed due to the virus who party without a face mask in bars and on yachts.. For the past 17 days, the United Arab Emirates as a whole has reported a record number of daily coronavirus cases as the number of lines at the testing facilities in Dubai grows.
In Israel, more than 900 travelers returning from Dubai have been infected with the corona virus, which conducts contact tracking, according to the military. The returnees caused a chain of infections of more than 4,000 people, the Israeli military told the AP.
Tens of thousands of Israelis had come to the UAE since the two countries normalized relations in September. Dr. Sharon Alroy-Preis, an expert at the Israeli Ministry of Health, was quoted by Channel 13 TV as lamenting in a telephone conversation with other officials that traveling a few weeks had been more deadly than decades without relations with the Arab nation.
Since the end of December, Israel has been demanding that those coming from the UAE go into a two-week quarantine. Israel later closed its main international airport until the end of the month due to rising cases.
In the UK, tabloids have snapped photos of bikini-clad British influencers partying in Dubai as the country struggled with lockdowns to get the virus under control. Britain closed a travel corridor to Dubai in mid-January that allowed travelers to skip quarantine instead of what has been described as a significant acceleration in the number of cases imported from the UAE.
“International travel should not take place at this time unless absolutely necessary,” Health Secretary Matt Hancock told the BBC this week. “No parties in Paris or weekends in Dubai. That is not on and in most cases it is against the law. “
Meanwhile, mutated strains of the coronavirus have been fed back to Dubai. The UK imposed a travel ban on Friday, excluding direct flights to the UAE due to 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 variant, the first such discovery there. Like Great Britain, Danish celebrities similarly traveled to Dubai for the New Year.
In the Philippines, health authorities say they have discovered a British species that infected a Filipino who was on a business trip to Dubai on Dec. 27. He returned to the Philippines on January 7 and tested positive.
He “had no exposure to a confirmed case prior to their departure to Dubai,” said the Philippine Ministry of Health. Since then, the Philippine authorities have discovered at least 16 other cases of the British variant, including two from Lebanon.
As nearly 4,000 cases of coronavirus reported daily, Dubai has fired the head of its government health agency without explanation. It stopped live entertainment in bars, stopped nonessential surgeries, limited wedding sizes, and ordered gyms to increase the space between those who were exercising. It now also requires coronavirus testing for anyone flying to the airport.
The UAE had pinned its hopes on mass vaccinations, with Abu Dhabi distributing a Chinese vaccine through Sinopharm and Dubai offering the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccination. The UAE says it has given 2.8 million doses to date, making it one of the top countries in the world.
However, people, including al-Shaikh, are now doubting Dubai’s ability to handle the increasing cases. Hospitals contacted by the AP largely referred the questions back to the Dubai government, which repeatedly declined to comment. Dubai’s Saudi-German hospital replied that it “hoped to read the real news,” without elaborating.
Dr. Santosh Kumar Sharma, the medical director of NMC Royal Hospital in Dubai, told the AP “the number of cases is (rising) ever”, with more than half the beds occupied by coronavirus patients.
The World Health Organization said the UAE had nearly 13,250 hospital beds for a country of more than 9 million people before the pandemic. It said Dubai and the UAE’s northern emirates were building field hospitals amid the 5,000-bed pandemic, and Abu Dhabi more.
But Dubai closed its 3,000-bed field hospital in July – the same day it reopened to tourism. Both Dubai and the UAE Ministry of Health are now advertising nurses on Instagram.
“The sad thing is that great efforts have been made since January 2020 to come and undermine them with our own hands,” al-Shaikh wrote. “What makes matters worse is the lack of transparency.”
But that came after the UAE’s autocratic government told those concerned earlier this week to “refrain from questioning the efforts of all those who have worked to contain this pandemic.”
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Associated Press authors Josef Federman in Jerusalem and Isabel DeBre in Dubai, UAE contributed to this report.