DHA receives more than 1.1 million calls since beginning of pandemic

Dubai Health Authority’s (DHA) Contact Centre has received more than 1.1 million calls since the beginning of the pandemic.

Releasing the stats, Fatma AlKhajah, Director of the Customer Happiness Department at the DHA revealed that more than 401,633 of those calls were related to COVID-19.

As many as 22,537 calls were received for booking testing appointments in Al Ahli and Al Nasr Club drive-through COVID-19 facilities.

Furthermore, 69,379 of the calls were for booking appointments through the “Doctor for Every Citizen” service which provides free 24/7 consultation and queries regarding COVID -19 via video and voice calls.

As many as 181,623 calls were received from June until July 10 alone and almost 70,000 of those were related to COVID-19.

"At the peak of the pandemic, the number of calls exceeded all our expectations as we received around 18,000 calls a day. To meet the public’s needs of wanting official and trusted information, we launched  a WhatsApp hotline to answer queries related to COVID-19," said AlKhajah.

The 24|7 WhatsApp service, which is available in English and Arabic is updated regularly.

"Our WhatsApp service received 50,138 chats out of which 47,772 was answered electronically and 2,366 were answered by a live agent. We have also answered 156,058 chats via the DHA website and sent 83,714 text messages," she added.