Until recently the number of cases in Qatar was 12 but they were all from the extradition flight from Iran so had safely been quarantined without interacting with any of the public here. Unfortunately there was an announcement this afternoon by the Ministry of Public Health that three more cases have been discovered -- but they weren't part of that Iran flight. It means that Qatar now has its first independent cases.
According to the Ministry the apartment building where the three were staying at has been quarantined and authorities are testing anyone who may have been in close contact with them. Hopefully the three weren't wandering around Qatar for too long.
It is possible they were under quarantine already, many expats who arrived from high risk countries were quarantined in designated apartment buildings (yesterday a friend of mine was telling me about one Italian colleague who was sequestered in such a building). We'll see in the next few days if more free-roaming cases appear.
Qatar is already preparing for problems and coronavirus is on people's minds. Some of my colleagues have been avoiding crowded areas like malls, and my office building has installed hand sanitizer stations in the elevators. Public bathrooms have signs instructing people how to properly wash their hands and how to minimize the risk of acquiring the virus. I'm seeing people wearing masks now, maybe 10-15% of people wandering around are wearing them. Schools are still open (Kuwait, Bahrain and UAE closed them) but I suspect if more cases appear then Qatar will close the schools as well.
There's been no panic-buying yet, plenty of toilet paper in the shops (why toilet paper has been a craze in the West I don't know), but hand sanitizer is definitely hard to come by. I picked some up last weekend but there wasn't much left. But there are other ways to sanitize. Surprisingly while the hand sanitizers were running low there were plenty of bottles of 70% ethyl alcohol as well as 70% isopropyl alcohol bottles right by where you would buy sanitizer. I don't know if people realize those alcohols are the main ingredient of most hand sanitizers and work just as well. There are online recipes for making at-home hand sanitizer with either of those alcohols but just using them as they are will work fine. I did some searching and as long as the strength is at least 60% it will kill the virus. The alcohols are a liquid so maybe get something like an eye-dropper so you don't use too much.
Hopefully in Qatar things don't get as extreme as in the nearby countries. Saudi has quarantined one city today, and closed the bridge and Saudi Arabia and Bahrain to non-commercial traffic. Kuwait is not letting most (all?) non-citizens into the country, basically trying to seal the country off, and Bahrain now has 85 cases, which is more per capita than China. As long as everyone stays calm, takes precautions, and keeps washing their hands things shouldn't get too severe.
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