Daijiworld Media Network - Dubai

Dubai, Apr 18: The Emirate announced a two-week lockdown starting at 8 pm onwards on April 4 in order to disinfect the area and contain the spread of the coronavirus. However, in further efforts to curb the outbreak of the virus, the programme will be extended for another week, Dubai’s Supreme Committee of Crisis and Disaster Management announced, on Friday. The decision to extend the programme was based on careful assessment and analysis of the impact of measures in the past two weeks, along with the Command and Control Centre for Combating COVID-19.

The committee monitored the results of the lockdown which restricted movement of people and vehicles. This measure helped improve the efforts to fight the coronavirus by enabling sterilization operations to be carried out on a larger scale and by allowing medical teams to conduct large-scale testing in densely populated areas.

In order to avoid unwanted disruptions in the lives of the residents, the Dubai government ensured that the people will be allowed to leave their houses in order to buy essential items like food and medicine.

The government also introduced an online system by which residents can apply for a movement pass, which will facilitate the easy movement of people during the lockdown. The Dubai police is working on speeding the process of issuing these permits.

The committee emphasized the need for the people to abide by the rules and instructions issued by the Ministry of Health and Prevention and the Dubai Health Authority. Individuals are to wear face masks, gloves, maintain social distancing and regularly disinfect their hands using sanitizers or soap and water.

An assessment conducted, revealed that the restriction imposed on movement helped reduce the spread of the disease significantly. The committee thanked the residents for abiding by the rules and cooperating with the preventive measures suggested during this period. They further urged them to continue following these instructions by staying at home and stepping out only when absolutely necessary.

The committee issued a list of reasons for which the residents were allowed to go out for, including,

• Purchase of essential food items; for which only one member of the family is allowed to leave the house. The permit for this will be issued only once every three days.

• Buying medicines or for seeking medical aid or assistance. Permits for this can be obtained under the medical emergency category.

• COVID-19 tests.

• Withdrawal of cash: This permit will be issued only once every five days for not more than an hour.

• Employees in the vital sectors do not need to apply for a permit but will have to produce a letter from their employer stating the purpose of their commute.

These vital sectors include healthcare services, food supply outlets, delivery services, restaurants, medicine manufacturers, media sector, water and electricity sector, vital industries, telecommunications sector, airports, airlines, ports, shipping, municipal services, buses and taxis transport, construction sector, customs duty and border crossings, public and private security services and private and government sector organizations involved in fighting COVID-19.