Historic sent banks and does the job only have what it takes to beat a. Special coverage on aljazeera. For me when you see. Its been nearly 2 months since qatar implemented a series of measures to contain the outbreak of. The government has since closed schools issued state hope i did post travel bans all travelers from many countries. But one of the number of deaths here remains low infection rates continue to rights. I am. In doha i would be speaking to a Public Health minister. About the governments efforts to tackle the coded 19 pandemic join me for a special talk to with the qataris Public Health minister. The bottom how much to worry thank you for talking to al jazeera lets start with where we are today over the last few days a week or so weve seen a significant twice infection rates why is that yes the number of cases has gone up but thats only natural and i believe that actually its a result of our a very strong testing measures so as youve seen we are testing a lot of that so weve been testing approximately 40000 per 1000000 so thats a question that because thats one of the highest rates of testing and that reflects a true picture of whats happening in terms of infection rates so the rates are not high theyre realistic but you will find that a lot of. Countries at the end of their pandemic will realize that their curve actually looks like ours so if you see the number of cases and that are maybe high but theyre actually a mild cases so 93 percent of the cases are mild only one percent end up in i. C. U. And another 5 percent and up in the admitted in the hospital and thats actually quite a good rate to have in the country and thats because we are very active in seeking the cases were very active in finding cases tracing then later in the quarantining them and therefore managing their case and situation much better when you look of the available data the 2nd highest number of confirmed cases in the arab world where you see those numbers compared to the total number of the population you surpass countries like spain italy and germany should people be concerned about this no they shouldnt be because 1st starters were a small country and no the statistical measures. Small countries are disadvantaged because if you look at per population if youre a small country that tests a lot and that reports are testing results then you always look like you have more cases then the large countries because the large countries will not be able to test per population as much as we are able to test for a population so perp operation will look like we have more cases but that doesnt mean they do not have this many cases that means that they have not reached the level of testing per population so youll find countries like qatar like look some bill like iceland have quite a high number per population but thats only because were small and we test a lot based on Mathematical Modeling yes applied in Different Countries with different variables you start of the confinement measures about 2 months ago and people were thinking that by this time should be already past the the peak bush is not the case you. You are entering into of the mathematical models and simulations the purpose of them is to help you plan your services and your search that is the ultimate purpose of a mathematical model to tell you how much to expect and therefore what to plan for your country and weve used mathematical models to do that to understand what should be our Search Capacity what would be our best scenario is our worst Case Scenario and we prepared for all scenarios now the model changes as you change your inputs so when you take measures of social distancing. And you are more active at tracing and finding cases you flatten the peak and when you flatten the peak you actually move the peak it doesnt come very aggressive and thats something you want because when the peak comes in a very aggressive go and its very sharp you get what happened in italy whats happening in new york what happened and china early on where you have a very aggressive peak with a very high mortality rate which when you flatten the curve the peak moves it becomes less aggressive and is therefore more manageable the confirmed cases belong to 3 categories the stalk category after the other the 1st one is those with mild or no symptoms whatsoever so when the scum come out positive of the ask to self isolate of the quarantine is this something which is not under the umbrella of the government could you just further to elaborate on this in particular what what weve done in a cutout is quite unique in this very special and thanks to his highnesss leadership and generosity were able to implement a system thats quite unique and very safe for the population so 1st starters when you are suspected that you come either from a country that had high cases or that you were in contact with somebody whos positive youre asked to quarantine either in a government owned facility a government when facility or at home depending. On your level of risk so depending on how risk or how many cases were in the country that youve come from if the risk is very high we will ask you to to quarantine one of our facilities if your risk is very low we will let you quarantine at home and we will monitor you to make sure that you you comply to the quarantine it is a problem with this in particular because this is something we should be based on trust and yes and you have certain states of us that some of the people have violated those quarantines and could spread the virus of a people could be responsible in a way or another to the spike in confirmed cases though weve seen we have been very rapid at addressing people who have violated quarantine so the state issued a legal decree and if you saw when we had a few people that violated early on those people will face justice because its a social responsibility and they failed in their social responsibility lets talk about weve been talking about your symptomatic careers are those with mild symptoms those with severe inflammation of the response to retract what is the recovery rate among those people its actually quite high as you saw we have a very low fatality rate probably the lowest fatality rate in the world right now and. I believe we and singapore are the only 2 countries with such a low fatality rate so weve had so far 12 patients that died too which is that if you look at the actual fatality rate thats point 74 per 1000 thats extremely low 1st its because we track and trace early so we identify the patients already and everybody that we identify as positive we take them through a regular System Health screening so we when if you are identified as positive we will check your blood we will give you an x. Ray and we will make sure that you stay healthy throughout your isolation period in our facilities. At the minute you did. We see science that you are potentially at risk we will start you on a number of medication protocols and this way we prevent that you deteriorate to the point of reaching the i. C. U. And then in the i. C. U. Should you reach there is you know we have a very very strong team in the i. C. U. Our Health Care System is very strong thanks to his highness who has emphasized over the last few years on building a very strong Health Care System we have enough resilience in our Health Care System to take a very large load so we are fine with it comes the Health Care System we have actually built up a capacity to have 700 i. C. U. Beds fully equipped with ventilators and. Fully staffed. If you need to be one of the things that weve done in qatar is weve dedicated covert hospitals so early on when we saw that the threat of coronas coming onboard we were very concerned for the well being of our population we did not want outbreaks in our hospitals so we dedicated 5 hospitals 5 totally new hospitals just for caring for corona patients so that the general population can continue to Access Health care in the tertiary hospitals and the Community Hospitals we also have invested in a lot of new innovations this has created opportunities for the local industries to to emerge because as you know there is a crisis on masks and accessible to mask so now we produce masks locally we also produce ventilators locally we also produce some of the protective gear locally so this has been an opportunity so the threat has created an opportunity for our local markets for the time being theres no cure so the the medical community is relying basically treatment basically on until viral drugs which have been no generating some momentum particularly. Severe. Starting to administer to his patients we have not yet started to administer it because its available on Clinical Trials and we are participating. In Clinical Trials such we should be receiving that soon to mr to our patients however we are very hopeful that it will be a very promising drug but we also have other enter viral treatments that were following in our patients and it is very effective and its very helpful so hydrochloric in this one of them that we use for our patients and we use a combination of medication and drugs that are extremely effective at the moment but indeed were hopeful that like the rest of the world were hopeful that medication and treatment will improve across the world and we participated in multiple Clinical Trials to improve the outcome of medications a beginning of a pandemic here in the majority of the cases were located in what is called the Industrial Area which is the commercial hub outside of the copper to doha qatar question about that area in particular is it still the epicenter of the outbreak so quite early on to our tracking tracing we identified that there was a cluster and the Industrial Area the Industrial Areas a very important area for us because its the hub of our Business Activities and and our commercial activities so its a very important area for us and when we identified that cluster we were concerned that we have a cluster starting in a zone thats quite important so we took very strong Public Health measures including locking down the area in order to safeguard the wellbeing of the community thats there the community is quite large its a very large zone its a full city in the self and what weve done is that we have. Made sure that the community has all its needs in that zone and that the Health Care Professionals weve set up a number of clinics there weve set up a number of hospitals in their Field Hospital actually. In order to make sure that all the Public Health measures and all the medication and treatment that the area needs is contained and is available for them to do because when you start of the law looking down that area. Particular thats where International Rights organizations were pretty much concerned. Saying that basically the Migrant Workers are at particular risk of exposure to corona virus because of the lack of a dick with water sanitation and those areas are notoriously overcrowded i think the point about dense population is true everywhere so in every city where there is dense population the risk of the coronavirus spreading is higher so you saw that in the capitals where there is a very high death population even new york its a very densely populated area so when you have to us populations then you have a higher risk and you need to take very strong Public Health measures and thats what we did and we have multiple organizations working at making sure that the population and there is active because they are active they are still. Theyre working theyre getting their wages theyre theyre going down theyre shopping theyre moving so that area is locked down but it is not Restricted Movement for the individuals unless they are quarantine themselves because theyre suspected there unless theyre isolated themselves because theyre positive cases you can see that basically Contact Tracing and testing have been instrumental in containing the spread but with this case which is further the infection spiking. Building an army of investigators who were traced contacts is something we should require massive investment and dont you see it as a challenge of this particular time when the curve is speaking quite the opposite building that team is a really important and we invested a lot in building that team quite early on we started off with a very small team about 20 to 20 Public Health workers to Contact Tracing and now we have over 3300 Public Health workers doing Contract Tracing and that team because its really important. Work and its work thats required by a profile professional weve had volunteers weve had medical students trained up to be Public Health workers just Contact Tracing weve had. University. Professors have joined the team the Public Health team so its actually quite a strong and good team and this team is also key to opening up and knocked on the sustaining a low infection rate in the community in the future very soon we will be able to take advantage of the new application at us which we launched recently and which shows you if you have been in contact with somebody who was positive or in contact with somebody whos quarantined and then youll be able to. To know if youre at risk and as well as we will be able to identify who has been the contact of an individual and this very poor troll weve seen the early reports of. Dollars and its really helpful and i dont who has been in contact with so that we can isolate the individuals appropriately it quarantine them appropriately if need be and also more importantly actually tell them that youve been in contact with somebody who is positive and that you need to be aware and watch your own symptoms and see and if theres something that you might be worried about which are to our hotline what kind of indicator. Would. Be enough we used to say were starting to flatten the curve we have flattened the curve and the fact that we are not picking as aggressively as we could have is because we have flattened the curve so very early on we put in place social distancing measures including closing down some of the businesses that we know are very close contact and that encourage close proximity between individuals. By doing those activities by going more online for schools for government organizations 20 percent of our workforce are working from their from their offices and 80 percent are working online so by putting in place all these social distancing measures we have actually flattened the curve but also we will be we will continue to monitor when weve reached the peak and when we can and when weve gone down the peaks so we measure attack rate so how many people are affected in the population that we that we test and weve see the tax rate in general reduced in certain communities so were very happy with that reduction we measure our reproduction rate and our production rate has dropped significantly and were very happy with that and we need to really continue so the General Community has been fantastic in complying to the guidelines and to the directives of the government to round keeping your social distance staying at home and because they stayed at home because the businesses have been consistent at keeping the social distances masking we have managed to reduce our attack rate reduce our production rate and we will ensure a lot soon see the end of the peak of the countries that have met as you know well rather to flatten the curve. Baiting steps to worse reopening and i think this is one of the issues that you will have to deal with in the upcoming weeks. Are you thinking in terms for example of phasing out confinement measures as a 1st step yes well weve. As a country the confinement measures we took were quite reasonable so we did not take any measures that we did not feel scientifically we need to take so we took the measures that were most critical and high risk for a population so we will remove these measures in the same way we will start by removing the measures that are lowest risk for the population and the ones that are higher risk will be removed at the end and we will be phasing unlocking of all the measures in place and we will follow the guidelines the best practice of choice put out some advice on how do you phase out and that advice is be very careful do it in stages do it between 2 weeks intervals and thats the principle by which we will be doing ours also i think ultimately because of Public Health your recommendations will be instrumental to the government when it comes to using the restrictions but you know this is a tough tough task because on one hand you cannot keep the confinement indefinitely because its going to damage the economy but the other hand you should be concerned about the potential for the rebound exactly what would be the best way to navigate through this delicate choice our priority as a country is always the safety of our population so thats very clear and we will not open the measures unless it is fine to do that unless its safe to do that and therefore our priority will be to those measures that are least risk for our population and we will keep the activities that are highest risk to our population as the last to open up because its really important we do not want to rebound we do not want to 2nd curve. Once you when you start going down and if you open too quickly and not doing that carefully with all the public measures in place then you could end up with a 2nd curve and we dont want that we want to manage that correctly epidemiologists. Expect in the absence of a vaccine vision of action yes resurgent waves of infections all the way through 2022 yet has been about. Exactly what else are we talking here about contingency plans for the qatari government i think every country is learning what it means this is something very new that covert virus is a new virus but every country is learning how to addressed i mean even the w. H. O. Is giving advice as we learn more about the disease and it is apparent that indeed covert virus will be around for a year and hath not 2 years until there is effective treatment or there is a vaccine and the 2 there is promising work on both areas treatment and vaccine but there is not yet a timeline showing when that will happen so i dont think anyone can can foretell the future but we will have to be as countries all countries and others we would have to be very vigilant and keep keep our Public Health measures in place to keep some restrictions to ensure that we do not allow a resurgence of the diseases we will have to reinvent the way we work so this experience has been very positive and so the innovation especially in health in education have been quite important and these innovations will be key to to to maintaining low infection rates. In the next period so more online activities in the Health Care Services for example we do a lot of Home Delivery we do telemedicine our patients are older patients do not have to come to the hospital we come to them at home via our teleconferencing facilities with them they do their physiotherapy with us online we deliver their medicine at home we do a lot of our referrals and our consultations virtually now and this type of innovation. And health and education and other sectors will be really important to the next year and a half because as as outbreaks go up and down these measures become very important and these. Innovations will really keep our systems going to look at the timeline of the Upcoming Events qatar is home to a large expanse community used to traveling during the summer time coming back to qatar for september when schools reopened we dont know whether they will by the time. People would like to know whether there will be any easing of the restrictions as you know the supplying is concerned i think its definitely there will be easing of restrictions but when this very difficult to say right now as you saw all the countries across the world are are are grappling with that question of when will there is restrictions and what will that using look like and i think that as we. Time well know a little bit more about how that will look like but theyll definitely be easing of restrictions on that but how will that look like. Will it mean mandatory quarantine so a lot of countries now are saying that as part of our opening up of our travel theres going to be mandatory quarantine thats will probably be also the case and the how and so on and so on so what the opening up of travel will look like and the travel industry all together how its being impacted as a global level is still yet to be seen if you look at Different Countries theyre grappling with the same concerns yes the same challenges theyre trying to work in other innovative ways like for example they would say for traveling would require people to do onsite testing protective barriers of a check in more safety procedures on board planes. Reopening shopping was that we would put it in a different way we have to think about a way because if this goes on for quite some time people are really tied there is a new norm of how to do business now and that new norm needs to be well understood so. Public health good hygiene need to mean to people Good Business so if as a business if i have an outbreak in my business then my business will be impacted my business will slow down but if i manage the Public Health of 5 make sure theres distancing if i make sure my workers are well protected theyre masked. The public that comes into my Organization Also as master and. Took all the measures that i need to take that my business will not be affected and if im innovative if i think of how can i deliver my Business Online how can i deliver to peoples homes how can i deliver it in different methods then i will not be affected by a by this so innovation is really key and i think thats also one of the areas of cut that is contradicting at the global level so i thought has participated in the united nations. Accelerated labs on innovation to help promote Global Innovations across the world on how to improve businesses improve life in the new norm which is a norm with corona. Threatening over our heads and im one of the kuwaiti minister of Public Health thank you for talking to us just. Thank you matt. There is no channel that covers world news like we do as a roaming correspondent i am constantly on the go covering topics from politics to conflict is just off the job are mental issues the scale of this count is like nothing youve ever seen access to health care at all so we want to know just how do these things affect people we revisit places to stay even when there are no international headlines. Really invests in that and thats a privilege as a journalist. Rewind continues to care bring your people back to life im sorry with updates on the best of aljazeera documentaries in the live close the globe the books the know like and the other student and rewind continues quick shake my neighborhood i was like screaming get us so closed we wont leave. My ultimate goal would be to do something very big for the fans to communication we want on aljazeera the venezuelan Colombia Border has become a Stomping Ground for trespasses. As desperate people transgress an illegal passage. To feed an emerging field trafficking markets. We follow that perilous journey unguarded through the line of fire. Risking it all the fan israel in colombia. On aljazeera. Al jazeera. Well i wrote about this and this is the news hour live from doha coming up in the next 60 minutes on the move again france and spain start lifting some of the toughest coronavirus restrictions in europe. Bloodier putin announces that russia is easing its economic restrictions even as infections surged to the 4th largest worldwide to. Saudi arabia slashes budgets and increases to