Abu Dhabi ranked as world's safest city for handling of the pandemic, again

And there’s nowhere else we’d rather be…

A recently published survey from the Deep Knowledge Group (DKG) has ranked Abu Dhabi as the world’s safest city in terms of pandemic response. Again.

Based on date collated in March of this year, the survey looked at 25 global cities (as representatives of specific regions, which is why other UAE cities were not included) and analysed 1,300 data points under five broad categories in order to determine which urban areas were ticking all the right boxes, and which were caught napping under boxes.

The cities were evaluated on: Economic Resilience, Government Efficiency, Healthcare Management, Quarantine Efficiency, and their Vaccination Rate. Abu Dhabi scored highly across the board, but came out with distinctions in government efficiency, economic resilience, vaccination rates and quarantine policy.

Which other metropolitan areas won big in the safety stakes? Seoul, in South Korea came second, Syndney in Australia picked up the bronze position, whilst Singapore was in at number four.

On the other end of the spectrum, we have Bangkok in Thailand as the lowest ranked for pandemic safety, one up from that was Hungary’s Budapest and third last, it was Rome, the capital of Italy.

How Abu Dhabi hit the top spot

Much of the capital’s success story can be traced back to the fast, decisive and effective policy making by the Abu Dhabi leadership.

The city was praised for keeping one of the lowest mortality rates globally, and for its speed in setting up field hospitals, reaching the vulnerable, mass testing centres (so much so that Abu Dhabi is now a PCR test processing hub for other countries) and screening facilities with drive-through options, mask mandates and the innovative Green Pass system which is of course still in place today.

Abu Dhabi also spearheaded the research and development effort, not least in pioneering the world’s first Phase III trials of an inactivated viral vaccine. Following international trial approvals vaccination programme roll out across the UAE was so efficiently organised and rapidly deployed that the country was rarely outside of the top two nations globally for per capita immunisation rates.

Images: Getty