Stay safe at home during Eid
Today, technology has enabled us to keep in touch with everyone His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan
abu dhabi — Let’s protect ourselves and our families by avoiding gatherings; use technology to greet each other this Eid, said His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces, during a virtual Ramadan majlis on Thursday.
“I ask all our residents and citizens, especially during the remaining days of Ramadan and during the Eid period to protect themselves and protect our families and children and..our Eid traditions,” said Sheikh Mohamed during the majlis.
“Today, technology has enabled us to keep in touch with everyone, whether they are near or far. So let’s contact our families and loved ones through modern technology. We don’t want to see more cases.”
He added: “Every individual who gets infected affects others, and these numbers harm each and every one of us, whether directly or indirectly.”
Sheikh Mohamed said the UAE wants to keep cases low and they were starting to be somewhat promising. “However this changed during Ramadan.”
Older people, children and people with special needs should stay home. “I know it is hard, but for us it means saving lives. It means keeping our loved ones safe. We don’t want everything we did in the last months to be in vain because of a simple mistake that would cost us too much. God willing, when Eid comes next year, we will all be blessed with good health and happiness,” said Sheikh Mohamed.
He was hopeful that life would return to normal soon as the country’s economic situation was promising.
Sheikh Mohamed also interacted with several volunteers who shared with him their experiences of helping the government.
He promised to meet and hug all of the volunteering teams in the UAE after the pandemic is over.
Early detection
Dr Farida Al Hosani, spokesperson of the UAE health sector, said the UAE’s response to the pandemic focuses on early detection of cases. This helps in early intervention and in preventing the spread of the disease.
“Tests have helped in identifying hot spots and focusing on more vulnerable individuals,” she said.
“Surely the response has evolved with the spread of the disease. For example, at first we were focusing on people coming from China and developed a protocol for them.”
In the second phase, as the cases increased outside of China, the UAE focused on tracking people arriving in the country from these affected nations.
“We then focused on the spread within the local community,” she said.
“We worked together with many entities, working remotely. Distance learning and other measures were put in place to reduce people coming in contact with each another. Across all phases, our main focus was preventive measures, such as physical distancing, wearing face masks and handwashing. These are simple yet very important measures to prevent the disease from spreading.”
She said Covid-19 is here to stay for a while. Hence, observing these healthy habits should be the new lifestyle.
Keeping track of the pandemic figures was also very important and is done on a daily basis. The nation also monitors all research and studies that come up every day — preventive methods, diagnosis and treatment protocols. “We also keep track of some indicators on a daily basis and this helps us understand the status of the pandemic locally,” said Al Hosani.
Non-compliance leads to increase in cases
The number of cases is increasing due to the high number of tests conducted in the UAE and also because of some people’s failure to adhere to the preventive measures.
Al Hosani said people who didn’t observe social distancing rules have infected family members and friends. The official cited one case of an extended family that exchanged visits during Ramadan, causing infection to 19 family members. They included grandparents, who are now hospitalised and receiving treatment.
“Each member of this family thought that they were safe and didn’t come into contact with infected people in the community. But the reality today is that we can all get infected. Observing the rules is crucial to everyone to keep our families safe and prevent the spread of the disease,” said Al Hosani.