At the new Aster Hospital in Muhaisnah, Dubai on Monday, Latifa Hospital chief executive officer (CEO) Dr. Muna Tahlak cuts the ribbon along with Alisha Moopen and other officials.

Mariecar Jara-Puyod, Senior Reporter

There are two new COVID19 facilities in Dubai as another has reverted back to being a “non-COVID19 hospital” after having been certified “clean” by pertinent health authorities.

Recently certified clean by the Dubai Healthcare City Authority (DHCA) is the Mediclinic City Hospital within the Dubai Healthcare City free zone in Umm Hurair 2 and among the leading organ transplantation centers in the Middle East and North Africa.

All COVID19 patients of the hospital “(had been) transferred to other facilities,” according to the Mediclinic Middle East press statement forwarded to Gulf Today on Monday afternoon.

On the new COVID19 centers, one had been categorized as a “medical isolation facility.”

The special classification is aligned with the new “prevention strategy” of the Dubai Health Authority (DHA) which manages and operates it.

DHA-Board chairman/director general Humaid Al Qutami, in a press statement said the “prevention strategy takes different scenarios into consideration to help DHA foresee and appropriate decisions accordingly, such as establishing field hospitals or medical isolation facilities, among others.”

Al Qutami toured the medical isolation facility which sits on a 1,500-square meter plot near the government-owned Rashid Hospital, managed by DHA and located in Umm Hurair 2.

It was set up to achieve immediate detection and treatment of those suspected with the dreaded highly infectious disease.

Positive cases would also be monitored and taken care of in this center equipped with 25 rooms including intensive care units; isolation, treatment and examination rooms; and clinics.

Aster Hospital in Muhaisnah is the other new COVID19 facility. With its 50-bed critical care category, it boosts the 260-bed capacity of four other hospitals, under the private Aster DM Healthcare for COVID19 patients, to 310.

Inauguration chief guests were COVID19 Command and Control Centre chairman /Mohammed Bin Rashid University of Medicine and Health Sciences vice chancellor Dr. Amer Ahmad Sharif and Latifa Hospital chief executive officer Dr. Muna Tahlak.

Commenting on the occasion, Al Qutami said: “The public and private healthcare sectors in Dubai have shown exemplary partnership especially for managing the COVID19 pandemic and operating round-the-clock to provide optimum care to all patients.”

“We are thankful to Aster for the continued commitment to undertake all possible measures to control the pandemic as well as add capacity to treat critical care cases in Muhaisnah,” he also said.

Aster DM Healthcare founder/chairman/managing director Dr. Azad Moopen was grateful to the host government and all institutions which helped in the realization of the “new (fully equipped) secondary/tertiary care hospital.” The hospital also serves also as a COVID19 testing site.

Meanwhile, with the DHCA “certificate of satisfactory completion of the conversion of the Mediclinic City Hospital as non-COVID19 facility,” this would now allow staff and management to concentrate on the therapies and other health requirements of “vulnerable patients” such as the cancer-stricken and those awaiting or recuperating from delicate organ transplantation procedures.

The decision was made to give non-COVID19 patients “complete peace of mind.”

On the other hand, management had assured that those which may be classified as positive or suspected SARS-CoV2 carriers at the Emergency and Outpatient departments of the hospital still undergo the initial necessary medical check-ups, “isolated” and immediately referred and transferred to COVID19 facilities or hospitals.

Last month, in line with its efforts to conduct proactive COVID-19 medical examinations, the Dubai Health Authority (DHA) launched a highly-sophisticated mobile unit to conduct testing in densely populated areas, especially labour camps. The testing bus will also be available to certain segments of society such as the elderly and people unable to visit health centres due to underlying medical conditions.

The initiative was implemented in collaboration with the National Fire Fighting Manufacturing Company (NAFFCO) and SHIELDme. The mobile testing unit was designed and manufactured by NAFFCO in the UAE and provided to DHA for the purpose of community COVID-19 screening. It is equipped with internal and external isolation and sterilisation systems developed using SHIELDme technology.