MANILA, Philippines — Twenty-three Filipinos in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have died of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), Philippine Consul-General Paul Raymund Cortes said Friday.
“Meron na rin po tayong around 23 na namatay na atin pong mga kababayan sa COVID-19 dito lang po ‘yan sa Dubai,” Cortes said in a televised Laging Handa public briefing.
(We have around 23 Filipinos who have died of COVID-19 here in Dubai alone.)
“So far, marami naman po ang nakakarecover,” he added.
(So far, many of them are recovering.)
Cortes, however, did not say how many Filipinos in Dubai have contracted the coronavirus disease.
There are 16,240 confirmed COVID-19 cases in the UAE, according to the Johns Hopkins University and Medicine Coronavirus Resource Center.
There are some 650,000 Filipinos in the UAE, the second most favored destination for overseas Filipino workers in the Middle East, next to Saudi Arabia.
In Dubai, Cortes said Filipinos there working on a “no work, no pay scheme” were the most affected since a lockdown of the city was enforced in March.
While Dubai is slowly reopening its economy, the consul general has assured that the aid being given by the Philippine government for Filipinos there will continue.
He added that many Filipinos there have already expressed interest in going back to the Philippines.