Manama: Twelve days after recording 3 lakhs coronavirus cases, Gulf went past the 400,000-mark on Wednesday, as new cases stacked up quickly in Saudi, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman.
Latest figures indicate that some 403,163 people have contracted the virus across the six nation GCC, while the number of deaths reached 2,345.
The number of recoveries also continued to surge with 2,89,043 patients cured so far, while there were 1,14,120 active cases, according to the updated official figures at 3 am Thursday.
The caseload in GCC has shown a steady increase. On April 14, the number of cases in the GCC were 15,000, or it took 75 days to reach it. However, after the next 27 days it recorded more than 75,000 cases.
The GCC states took 102 days to cross the 100,000-mark since the outbreak first reported on January 29 in the UAE. Another 16 days to reach the benchmark 200,000 cases, exactly on 27 May and then in another 15 days, or in June 11, it went past the 300,000-mark. That means that just another fortnight, more than 1,00,000 new cases have been reported across the Gulf.
Saudi Arabia, the largest Gulf state with a population of about 3.37 crore, has the highest count at 1,64,144 infections and 1,346 deaths. About 41 % of the total GCC cases are in Saudi Arabia. It accounts more than half of all fatalities in the GCC— or 57%. Saudi has seen a sharp rise in the number of new cases for the past several days, while fatalities are hovering at around 38 cases per day.
Saudi recorded 3,139 new cases and 39 new deaths on Wednesday. The daily number of new cases in the kingdom first crossed the 1,000 threshold on April 18.
Citing some studies, the Health authorities said in April the virus could eventually infect up to 2,00,000 people in Saudi Arabia.
Elsewhere in the region, Qatar has the second largest outbreak in the Gulf with over 22.5 % of total GCC cases. A total of 1,199 new cases were reported in Qatar, while 1,142 in Oman. Cases and deaths have been on the rise in Oman for the past few weeks. There were 849 Covid-19 cases in Kuwait. Bahrain registered 655 more cases and the UAE 450 cases on Wednesday.
The total infections in the GCC now stands as: Saudi Arabia- 1,64,144, Qatar-90,788, UAE-46,133, Kuwait-41,879 Oman-33,536 and Bahrain-23,570.
Qatar is leading in the GCC with the highest numbers of recoveries- over 80.50 % or 73,083 recoveries out of the total 90,778 cases.
Kuwait has 78.34 % recoveries, while recoveries in Bahrain rose to 76.27 %. More than 74.57 % of infected patients in the UAE now recovered from the virus.
In Saudi Arabia, more than 69% or 1,12,797 people have been cured so far. In Bahrain, the recovery rate is 68.92%. In Oman, the recovery rate is 53.59%.
Kuwait and the UAE are in second and third positions in terms of death rates, respectively. In Kuwait, the death toll was 337 and in the UAE it was 307. Oman has 142 deaths so far, while Qatar reported 104 and Bahrain 64.
