RIGOROUS TESTING ACROSS THE COUNTRY

Playing a crucial role in controlling the spread of the virus was mass testing done in different parts of the country beginning from Dubai.

As part of the national sterelisation programme to fight Covid-19, Dubai put Al Ras and Naif areas in lockdown from March 31 till April 26. More than 6,000 tests were conducted among residents in the areas in less than a month.

Extensive Covid-19 tests and medical check-up procedures were done by teams of the Dubai Health Authority in collaboration with other government agencies. Essential supplies were provided to residents of the areas during the period of restrictions.

Drive through centres popped up

To speed up the testing drive, the UAE on March 28, opened its first Covid-19 drive-through testing facility in Abu Dhabi, becoming the fifth nation in the world to do so. Having a capacity to test 600 people a day, the unit was jointly set up by the Department of Health (DoH) Abu Dhabi and the Abu Dhabi Health Services Company (Seha). Soon, Seha announced the opening of 13 additional drive-through testing facilities in the Capital. By midApril, Seha had opened centres in Dubai’s Port Rashid and Al Khawaneej areas, while there was one centre each open in Sharjah, Ajman, Umm Al Quwain, Ras Al Khaimah and Fujairah with 500 tests a day capacity.

Block by block, site by site, door to door

In addition to opening drivethrough centres for testing, the government also set up dedicated testing and quarantine facilities in at-risk neighbourhoods, such as Abu Dhabi’s Mussafah area. After an extensive six-week screening strategy in Mussaffah, the government announced that it had “fully contained” the spread of Covid-19 after tests on 570,000 residents.

In order to fully test residents of the emirate, Abu Dhabi also banned movement to, from and within the emirate from June 2 onwards to ensure that the maximum number of residents in the emirate are tested.

Later police and medics joined forces in Abu Dhabi to offer free Covid-19 tests at the homes of residents to boost efforts to drive down infection rates in the emirate.