South Korea has exported 51,000 coronavirus medical kits to the UAE as part of efforts to help the Middle East country fight the deadly pandemic.
President Moon Jae-in’s Blue House office announced on Tuesday that the kits, used for collecting, storing and transporting bodily samples to laboratories for testing, had been dispatched in emergency shipments.
“Virus diagnosis requires two kinds of devices, one for testing and the other for specimen collection,” a Blue House spokesman said. “What we exported to the UAE was the second one.”
He added that South Korea had also sent out testing and sampling kits to 17 other countries around the world.
Amid the global spread of the COVID-19 disease, South Korea has received global attention for its rapid testing regime that is behind a lower-than-average mortality rate. As of Wednesday, the east Asian country’s infection caseload stood at 8,413 with 84 fatalities.
The spokesman said that the shipment of the medical kits, which arrived in the UAE earlier this week, was part of “important international cooperation” on the outbreak. “I believe this kind of export marks a turning point at which we’re playing a role in helping foreign countries fight the deadly virus.”
With more kits still required, the UAE government had been in talks with South Korean companies over a potential long-term contract for additional orders, he added, referring to a strategic partnership between Seoul and Abu Dhabi.
“The (South Korean) foreign ministry has received a number of requests from others countries to support their efforts to fight the virus, but the first and foremost consideration for us is that any shipment should not affect domestic supply,” the spokesman said.
South Korea has emerged as a sign of hope and a model to emulate as the number of virus cases and deaths continued to soar in European countries, particularly Italy, Spain and France.
Seoul’s success in tackling the coronavirus has been attributed to its highly organized and innovative testing program, combined with extensive efforts to isolate infected people and trace and quarantine their contacts.
After the rapid spread of COVID-19 last month in the southeastern region of Daegu, the country adopted fast food-style drive-thru testing sites, making the process safer and faster.
The country has tested more than 270,000 people, which amounts to at least 5,200 tests per 1 million inhabitants, more than any other country except for Bahrain, according to the Worldometer website.
The US has so far carried out 74 tests per 1 million inhabitants, data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed.
