While Qatar’s early response to the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has been lauded for being effective and coherent, the country’s strategy against the pandemic has continued to evolve ever since. As the State and the region as a whole have experienced a surge in COVID-19 infection in recent weeks, the authorities in Qatar have responded by redoubling the COVID-19 prevention, detection and treatment efforts, and have expanded the health sector’s capacity to successfully handle the patient load.
In addition to existing network of hospitals and primary health centers, the authorities have set up fullyequipped field hospitals as a contingency plan. A 200-bed field hospital has been set up in the Industrial Area while a 504-bed facility has been made functional at Libsear military camp. The Industrial Area field hospital, which was conceived and built for the local population after the area was placed on lockdown, has a dedicated section for COVID-19 patients and can receive up to 3,000 patients daily. It is manned by 200 medical and paramedical staff and also has an ambulance station. The Libsear field hospital, which will receive COVID-19 patients exclusively, is a success story in itself.
It has been built within three weeks, as a result of collaboration between the Ministry of Public Health and the Ministry of Defence. The surge in the number of confirmed COVID-19 patients in the country in recent weeks is because the region is going through the peak phase of the outbreak, but is also the result of increased testing. The country has conducted more than 140,000 COVID-19 tests to date. Authorities are also carrying out random tests in different localities, supermarkets, private hospitals and residential complexes. Random testing is helping authorities determine the spread and flow of the infection in the community and detect asymptomatic cases. By aggressively tracing and testing contacts of confirmed cases, authorities aim to reach positive cases as early as possible to help break the chain of transmission and reduce the spread of the infection in the community.
And they have been largely successful in this, as approximately 25 percent of those tested through contact-tracing have been found positive. This high percentage shows the effectiveness of the contacttracing mechanism and that the right people are being tested. Qatar’s mortality rate of 0.05 percent — 14 deaths out of more than 26,000 confirmed cases to date — is among the lowest in the world, and a testament to the effectiveness of the country’s COVID-19 prevention strategy.
