We study quantum effects of strong driving field applied to dissipative hybrid qubit-cavity system which are relevant for a realization of quantum gates in superconducting quantum metamaterials. We demonstrate that effects of strong and non-stationary drivings have significantly quantum nature and cannot be treated by means of mean-field approximation. This is shown from a comparison of steady state solution of the standard Maxwell–Bloch equations and numerical solution of Lindblad equation on a density matrix. We show that mean-field approach provides very good agreement with the density matrix solution at not very strong drivings f < f* but at f > f* a growing value of quantum correlations between fluctuations in qubit and photon sectors changes a behavior of the system. We show that in regime of non-adiabatic switching on of the driving such a quantum correlations influence a dynamics of qubit and photons even at weak f.