Kuwaiti authorities are maintaining precautionary measures and internationally agreed procedures against the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pending restoration of normal life, a ranking official affirmed on Monday. Ministry of Health officials briefed the ministers during today’s cabinet session about the local current status of the contagion, said Dr. Buthaina Al-Mudhaf, the assistant undersecretary for public health affairs at the MoH.
The executives were addressed were briefed about statistics and precautions that have been taken since the germ crept into the country, as well as enormous efforts that have been exerted to contain and control the pandemic, said Dr. Al-Mudhaf. She was speaking at a joint news conference with the official government spokesperson Tareq Mizrem and the assistant professor for epidemics science at Kuwait University, Dr. Mohammad Al-Khamees.
Dr. Al-Mudhaf said she and her peers spoke, during the session, about methods employed to deal with local cases, challenges facing experts in bids to control the pandemic, tasks of epidemic tracing, regions’ isolation, namely districts of Jleeb Al-Shoyoukh and Al-Mahboula, with respect of number of the cases counted, in addition to future plans to isolate other, densely populated areas where a large number of cases have been found.
She stressed on necessity of adhering to the precautionary measures, namely social distancing, as the means to pave way for restoring normal living in the country. For his part, Professor Al-Khamees said the health officials advised the ministers about employment of state-of-art mathematical and computing methods in tracking the infection cases geographically and on daily basis.
Conditions in Kuwait, in the beginning, were under control however the pandemic later started spreading at community level, he said, describing how the pandemic status evolved at the local level. He revealed that these methods helped in discovering the pandemic spread at the community level.
Moreover, they proved useful for taking decisions on partial and full isolation of some regions. Furthermore, these mathematical patterns shed light on how the virus spread from a single person to several others — meaning the community outbreak. They were also used to pinpoint infested locations, helping health decision makers to set priorities for opening or closing contaminated districts.
Also in the beginning of the breakout, “We have had 30 major infested zones .. we have tackled nearly half of them ..,” he said, disclosing that 15 regions still contained contamination cases.
Earlier, Al-Mizrem said Minister of Health Dr. Basel Al-Sabah, head of the team tasked with following up on the coronavirus status, informed the ministers about latest developments at the international level. Dr. Al-Mudhaf and Dr. Al-Khamees gave a lengthy presentation during the session about the cases in the country from a perspective encompassing factors such as geography, age and nationality – in contrast to the pandemic status in other countries.
Read Today's News TODAY... on our Telegram Channel click here to join and receive all the latest updates t.me/thetimeskuwait
