How Abu Dhabi is now playing a key role in global coronavirus testing

How Abu Dhabi is now playing a key role in global coronavirus testing

The Department of Health – Abu Dhabi (DoH) on Thursday announced that the emirate is supporting international testing efforts by offering laboratory testing for Covid-19 samples from outside the UAE.

This first initiative of its kind in the world, in collaboration with Etihad Cargo, Agility and Unilabs, follows the success of its own ambitious testing programmes.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, the UAE has conducted more than 29 million Covid-19 tests on more than 9.5 million people, placing the country among the nations with the highest rates of screening in the world.

China and Australia are among the countries from which visitors will no longer have to quarantine upon arrival in the emirate

Abu Dhabi has successfully increased daily tests rates and laboratory capacity from approximately 1,000 to 170,000 tests per day, using 22 laboratories which deliver reliable results in just four hours.

Now, in coordination with the Abu Dhabi-based Agility International Shipping Company and Etihad Airways, the emirate has started to receive thousands of testing samples from overseas, ranging between 5,000 and 10,000 samples per day.

Unilabs Laboratories has operated on a large scale to accelerate the speed of the diagnosis and analysis of samples and extract the results within 24 hours of the