UAE Marches Ahead In Reducing Risk To Buildings From Covid-19

DED has launched a series of campaigns to raise awareness and educate businesses and individuals on the best practices they need to adhere to. Social distancing, of course, is one of the key moves

- Inayat-ur-Rahman

The sheer scale of impact caused by the COVID-19 outbreak is an unprecedented crisis facing the world. Global population, at the time of the Spanish Flu outbreak in 1918, was a mere 1.5 billion, a fifth of what it is today. With preventative measures taking precedence in containing and reversing the spread of contagion, more than one-third of this current population is living under a lockdown or self-quarantine directives. Given many experts estimate that development and testing of a possible vaccine is likely to take around a year, these quarantine measures are expected by most to last at least for the next few months.

One of the practical issues that dealing with this scenario entails is securing our buildings to mitigate the effects of the virus. As venues in which we conduct our lives, buildings have the potential to be our safe haven. However, left unchecked, they can also be a repository of infection that spreads the contagion like wildfire. Fortunately, the UAE is rising to the challenge with several measures to secure the health of residents, through best practices that ensure that effective management of buildings reduces the risk to a minimum.