After opening itself to New Year revellers, Dubai is now being blamed by several countries for spreading the coronavirus abroad, as questions swirl about the city-state's ability to handle record spikes in Covid-19 cases.
The government said the kingdom is doing all it can to handle the pandemic, though it has repeatedly declined to answer questions about its hospital capacity.
In a statement, the government said: “After a year of managing the pandemic, we can confidently say the current situation is under control and we have our plans to surge any capacity in the health care system should a need rise.”
However, Nasser al-Shaikh, Dubai’s former finance minister, offered a different assessment on Twitter, and asked authorities to take control of a spiralling caseload.
“The leadership bases its decisions on recommendations from the team, the wrong recommendations which put human souls in danger and negatively affect 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 last July.
The move staunched the bleeding in its crucial tourism and property sectors after lockdowns and curfews had hit the economy.
As tourism restarted, daily reported coronavirus case numbers slowly grew, but mostly remained stable through the autumn.
But then came New Year’s Eve — a major draw for travellers from countries otherwise shut down over the virus who partied without face masks in bars and on yachts.
For the last 17 days, the United Arab Emirates as a whole has reported record daily coronavirus case numbers as queues at Dubai testing facilities grow.
In Israel, more than 900 travellers returning from Dubai have been infected with the coronavirus, according to the military, which conducts contact tracing.
It said the returnees created a chain of infections numbering more than 4,000 people.
Since late December, Israel has required those coming from the UAE to go into a two-week quarantine.
Israel later shut down its main international airport until through the end of the month over rising cases.
Denmark already discovered one traveller coming from Dubai who tested positive for the South African variant, the first such discovery there.
In the Philippines, health authorities 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 7th and tested positive.
He “had no exposure to a confirmed case prior to their departure to Dubai”, the Philippines department of health said.
In the time since, Filipino authorities have discovered at least 16 other cases, including two coming from Lebanon.
As daily reported coronavirus cases near 4,000, Dubai has sacked the head of its government health agency without explanation.
It stopped live entertainment at bars, halted non-essential surgeries, limited wedding sizes and ordered gyms to increase space between those working out.
It also now requires coronavirus testing for all those flying into its airport.
The UAE says it has given 2.8 million doses of the vaccine so far, ranking it among the top countries in the world.
Earlier this week, the UAE’s autocratic government told those who are worried to “refrain from questioning the efforts of all those who have worked to contain this pandemic”.
China
A World Health Organisation-led team of experts investigating the origins of Covid-19 on Friday visited a hospital in the Chinese city of Wuhan that was one of the first to treat patients in the early days of the outbreak.
After meeting with Chinese scientists earlier in the day, the team went to the Hubei Provincial Hospital of Integrated Chinese and Western Medicine.
Zhang Jixian, director of the hospital's department of respiratory and critical care, has been cited by state media as the first to report the novel coronavirus, after treating an elderly couple in late 2019 whose CT scans showed differences from typical pneumonia.
The WHO-led team was released from two weeks of quarantine on Thursday. It plans to visit labs, markets and hospitals during its remaining two weeks in Wuhan, where the coronavirus was first identified in late 2019.
While an exact itinerary has not been announced, the WHO has said the team plans to visit the seafood market at the centre of the early outbreak as well as the Wuhan Institute of Virology. One hypothesis, rejected by China, is that the outbreak was caused by a leak at the government lab.
The WHO-led probe in Wuhan has been plagued by delays, concern over access and bickering between China and the United States, which accused China of hiding the extent of the initial outbreak and criticised the terms of the visit, under which Chinese experts conducted the first phase of research.
The WHO has sought to manage expectations. "There are no guarantees of answers," its emergency chief, Mike Ryan, said this month.
"It is important to remember that the success of this mission and origin-tracing is 100 per cent depending on access to the relevant sources," Thea Fischer, a Danish member of the team, told Reuters on Thursday.
“No matter how competent we are, how hard we work and how many stones we try to turn, this can only be possible with the support from China.”
A Chinese foreign ministry spokesman, Zhao Lijian, said on Friday that WHO and Chinese experts were working together to trace the origin of the virus, but stressed that the mission was not an investigation.
Greece
Greece on Friday postponed plans to reopen all high schools next month following a fresh rise in Covid-19 infections, saying schools in critical "red zones" would continue with distance learning.
Athens said last week it would let high schools reopen on February 1st for the first time in more than two months as pressure on its public health system had eased in the last few weeks.
"High schools in red zones will continue to teach lessons from distance," deputy education minister Zeta Makri said in an interview with state TV ERT.
Parts of northern Greece and West Attica are the regions suffering most from a fresh surge in Covid-19 cases, which have doubled since the beginning of the week.
Civil protection and health ministry experts will hold a press briefing later on Friday providing more details.
Greece has already taken its first steps at loosening a second lockdown imposed in November, reopening primary schools and kindergartens, retail shops and hair salons.
On Thursday, health authorities reported 716 new coronavirus cases and 18 deaths, bringing total infections to 154,796 since the first case was detected in February last year. – AP/Reuters