For two days in a row Qatar has reported fewer than 500 cases, today was 470. Everything is slowly lowering: the number of active cases (about 3,900 now), people in hospital (636), and in ICU (140). New daily cases hasn't been this low since mid-April. There is still a way to go but considering it wasn't all that long ago that greater than 2,000 cases a day was occurring this is great progress.
I am a bit concerned that many people have "quarantine fatigue" and not taking it as seriously as before. Outdoors you see people without masks and at the beaches/parks masks are rare. The Government restrictions of having no more than five people at gatherings is (I'm pretty sure) being largely ignored. A second spike like in the US is possible if people get too lax.
Malls and businesses, on the other hand, are much more serious about it. This weekend I stopped by a mall as I wanted to go to a pharmacy to stock up on various meds and vitamins (sunscreen, panadol, vitamin C, etc. nothing serious). The mall was STRICT: temperature checks, mandatory masks, had to show your Etheraz app, all just to be let in. Everyone in the mall had a mask on. It wasn't too busy, and at the moment children under the age of 12 are banned from malls so families were not there. Restaurants were take-away only. I wasn't there long, just went straight to the pharmacy and back out again. Didn't want to risk the supermarket, which is where most people were headed. Next week I will do a grocery run, hopefully the daily cases has dropped even more by then.
The travel restrictions have meant that the population of Qatar is actually higher than normal. Monthly population stats are available at www.psa.gov.qa and the population this summer is around 300,000 more than this time last year. Schools have ended for the summer vacation and normally hundreds of thousands would leave Qatar for home or cooler weather. Most can't do that now, and those who could face two-week quarantine when they return, so everyone has stayed put. It is strange to not go anywhere, the last time I left Qatar was at year-end for a long weekend in Oman. The next time I leave will likely be November or December, so I will have gone almost an entire year without travelling.
Such is the crazy year we have all been having. Stay safe everyone.
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