Saudi Arabia on Monday night began implementing a nationwide dusk-to-dawn curfew to halt the spread of COVID-19, urging the public to stay home unless necessary and closing restaurants, cinemas, malls, and other places of gathering.
Photos from the official Saudi Press Agency released this week show a previously hard-to-imagine reality in Saudi Arabia: the Kingdom’s usually busy streets at night empty and quieted.
Empty streets in Riyadh. Photo via SPA.
On Wednesday, Saudi Arabia announced further restrictions in addition to the curfew, preventing domestic travel between the Kingdom’s governorates in order to prevent the spread of COVID-19. The Kingdom has already shut down international travel.
Saudi health authorities on Tuesday urged citizens to avoid “even small gatherings” which could prove “very dangerous” in spreading the coronavirus disease.
Empty streets in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia following a mandated curfew.
Of the 205 newly registered cases in Saudi Arabia, more than half (119) had been linked to travel and people coming into the country from abroad, Ministry of Health spokesman Dr. Mohammed Al-Abd Al-Aly said, adding that all the individuals were in isolation, Arab News reports.
“This fact gives importance of early precautionary steps to isolate cases healthily since their entry to Saudi Arabia, and thus the emergence of these cases, is proactively controlled and monitored,” said Al-Aly.
