So . . . did anyone hear that on January 5th the GCC met in Saudi Arabia and signed an agreement to end the blockade of Qatar? You didn't?! I guess it got buried in page 20 of the newspapers, you know, after the stories about the Democrats winning the Senate elections and the President unleashing a mob of "Y'all Qaeda" terrorists on the Capitol Building in Washington.
America is truly the World's "crazy-ex". Constant drama, and even when you want to ignore them and have them out of your life they get you caught up in all the craziness and you can't look away. Everything. Must. Have. Drama. America can't seem to do things like normal countries.
Anyway, the blockade is over after three-and-a-half years. The borders will reopen, Qatar Airways can fly over Saudi airspace again, flights between the countries will commence shortly. It is not the end of the matter, the agreement was the 'good faith' step to get the countries to complete negotiations to resolve other issues. The blockading countries had 13 demands at the start of this situation and so far Qatar has not done any of them. Zero. So let's see where this goes from here.
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I said I would avoid malls and restaurants for a while due to COVID cases ticking up in Qatar but then I realized if Qatar opens the border then thousands of Saudis could potentially flood in. Saudi Arabia has pretty much given up on COVID testing, every day they report around 100 cases of COVID, yet around 10 people die every day, which is more indicative of 3000+ cases a day. Basically there is tons of undetected COVID going around Saudi Arabia. So I went to the grocery store and stocked up on a few things, hopefully that'll be it until I get vaccinated. Then I found out the Qatar Government had already thought about this as well and stated that anyone crossing the border from Saudi Arabia would need to be quarantined for a week. Great news for keeping COVID down in Qatar, bad news for the tourism industry who I am sure were gearing up for an influx of Saudi tourists.
Local community transmission is still over 100 a day so that slight uptick continues. It looks like other GCC countries like Bahrain are seeing big increases, and it's possible a third wave is on the horizon. I think Qatar's measures will at least keep that more-contagious UK strain out of the country, others in the region might not be so lucky.
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