Up to 200,000 Covid tests daily: How UAE’s mass testing helps

Dubai - Understandably, this data includes tests taken by tourists upon arrival.

The UAE is one of the top countries that have done more Covid-19 tests than their population. So far, the Emirates has carried out nearly 64 million tests, and counting. This mass testing protocol has been key to limiting the spread of the virus, UAE doctors have said.

Understandably, this data includes tests taken by tourists upon arrival and also residents who may have done repeat tests for domestic travel or official purposes. But, all in all, the high number of Covid-19 tests helped keep the collective guard up and allowed the UAE to avoid country-wide lockdowns.

“The high number of tests helps in identifying the ground reality. Asymptomatic carriers of Covid-19 spread the disease to more people in comparison to symptomatic individuals. Such carriers can be traced and quarantined only through testing process. This surely helps keep the community safe,” said Dr Antony Thomas, pathologist and director of diagnostic division at Prime Healthcare Group.

Dr Celia Antony of Aster Clinic–King Faizal, Sharjah, added: “As we test more people, we can identify more positive cases in the early stages and isolate them when they’re in the most infective phase and start treatment as early as possible. This will prevent the spread of the disease more effectively and improve the recovery of positive cases.”

Come to think of it, it can be hard to ascertain the extent of spread of the Sars-Cov-2 virus without RT-PCR tests. Without data on who is infected, policymakers and health authorities have no way of understanding the pandemic.

The UAE has recently been conducting over 200,000 tests every day.

“Efficient data collection and management is helping us control this pandemic. Never in the history have we ever utilised health data in such a manner,” Dr Thomas said.

During the early months of the pandemic last year, the World Health Organisation (WHO) explained the ‘general benchmark’ for mass testing.

Dr Michael Ryan, executive director of the WHO Health Emergencies Programme, had said: “We would certainly like to see countries testing at the level of 10 negative tests to one positive as a general benchmark of a system that’s doing enough testing to pick up all cases. It’s not an objective but you really do want to see a lot... You know you’re missing a lot of cases if 80 or 90 per cent of the people you test are positive; you are probably missing a lot of cases.”

The UAE conducts 100-200 tests per confirmed case.

Dr Johny Pappachan Avookaran, internal medicine specialist at Aster Hospital, Qusais, hailed how the UAE has screened ‘millions of people’ but with the virus still around, he is expecting that more tests will have to be conducted.

“(Owing to) the inherent nature of the country where a very large number of people from all over the world transit and enter every day, even more people need to be tested for the virus. It cannot be overemphasised that testing for the virus is the most important approach to control the pandemic,” Dr Avookaran said.

“Accurate, extensive and continuous data collection, transmission and integration of data regarding the various aspects of the pandemic are seminally important for the control of the pandemic.”

suneeti@khaleejtimes.com