Saudi Arabia is seeing encouraging progress in the Kingdom’s efforts to stop the spread of Coronavirus, with a decrease in new cases and deaths right before the arrival of a limited number of pilgrims this year for the Hajj, according to official data.
Since July 6th, the Kingdom has seen a consistent and steady decline in daily reported new cases of Coronavirus. Data available shows a peak on June 17th, when daily new positive cases nearly reached 5,000.
On Monday, official data showed Saudi Arabia detected 1,993 new cases of the novel coronavirus in the past 24 hours, less than half the June 17th peak. According to the Ministry of Health, twenty-seven people died of the coronavirus in the last 24 hours, which raises the virus-relate death toll in the Kingdom to 2,760.
The trend comes after the Kingdom made the costly, cautious decision to significantly scale back this year’s Hajj in the Kingdom to only a small handful of selected pilgrims. The decision did not fully cancel this year’s Hajj, but rather only allowed those living in the country and who meet certain criteria to participate.
The Hajj is the largest annual human migration event that, in previous years, would have millions of pilgrims close together for days on end, making the risk of spread of any disease high. Saudi Arabia was successful in conducting the Hajj in previous years despite the threat of diseases like Ebola and MERS, but the highly infectious nature of the novel Coronavirus – and its spread in nearly every country this year – forced the Kingdom’s hand in drastically scaling back the Hajj.
