Qatar Coronavirus Update -- Holding Steady but Preparing for the Worst

Today the Ministry announced another 12 cases, bringing the total to 549.

The curve for Qatar is still pretty flat: I couldn't find all of the past data but here is the number of cases since the 12th:

March 12th 238, then 58, 17, 64, <40, <25, <10, <10, <10, 11, 13, 7, 25, 11, 12 (March 26) so for the last week it is typically around 10-12 new cases a day. But the Government is not resting on its laurels, they are taking this very seriously and preparing for the worst. Yesterday ten more Qataris were arrested for violating self-quarantine, and the Government has banned all social gatherings, including hosting people at a majlis. Friends have told me that police are roaming Qatari neighborhoods looking for cars parked in front of majlises. One of my friends told me that in his neighbourhood someone was 'busted' for hosting people at his majlis and was given a QAR 5000 fine (US$ 1,370). Stay home people! Despite the low number of new cases preparations are underway for new hospital capacity. Aside from the hospital dedicated to coronavirus that the government announced over a week ago, a field hospital was built in Al Khor, and a private hospital has been taken over by the Government to enhance the number of beds and equipment if needed. The most surprising announcement was the Government converting an entire compound into a hospital. It'll be ready shortly and will have capacity for 18,000 beds! 18,000 beds is some serious expansion. (And based on the photo in the article the Minister and the people with him should be standing further apart, just saying.)

That is serious preparation though. I searched the internet for the median age in Qatar and kept seeing numbers in the 32 & 33 range. That's fairly young, EU countries tend to have a median age of 40 or more. Also because most of the population are temporary expats there would be a 'bulge' of people around the 20-40 age range, it would be a lot greater than in Western countries, so there would not be a lot of elderly people by comparison. In fact the Government enacted rules a few years ago that Government offices cannot have expat workers over the age of 60 without getting special permission. So the population of Qatar is fairly young.

If we assume that 50% of infected people don't show symptoms, and about 20% of infected require hospitalization (I actually assume the percentage for Qatar would be even less given the relatively young age of the population but we'll go with 20%) then to fill 18,000 beds would require there to be 90,000 cases. That's more than Italy has right now and it has 60 million people, Qatar only has 2.7 million. For comparison that would be the equivalent of the United States having 11 MILLION cases of Covid-19, or the UK having 2.2 million cases. And the 18,000 beds Qatar is preparing does not include the three other hospitals being used or prepared for Coronavirus patients.

Already having one dedicated hospital for coronavirus has helped other hospitals immensely. A Qatari friend of mine had to take his father to the hospital recently for a non-flu issue and he told me the hospital had almost no patients waiting! Since non-elective surgeries have been cancelled, and most doctor consultations are now done over the phone to minimize people with appointments going to the hospital, there were no crowds in the hospitals at all. He also told me the hospital was extremely clean and he saw workers even washing the walls with alcohol.

And where are the cleaning products coming from? Qatar has a factory for that so it doesn't need to rely on imports. I'm not sure if the factory could produce enough for everyone at the same time but you can be sure if the caseload rises the Government will prioritize hospitals for the cleaning products.

Hopefully that hospital compound will never need to be used, but Qatar is preparing for things to get "Italy-level" bad. It won't if everyone just stays home and stops being reckless.