Manama: The deadly coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic continues to ravage across the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, infecting more than 93,157 people and killing nearly 611.
32 people have died in the last 24 hours, recording the biggest jump in the number of deaths in a day.
It was the fifth straight day that the daily caseload is hovering at 1,800. The country recorded 1,975 new coronavirus cases on Thursday. The largest single-day spike in Covid-19 cases was recorded on May 16 with 2840 infections.
Saudi Arabia remains the worst-hit country in the six nation Gulf in terms of coronavirus cases and number of deaths. The death toll in Saudi stood at 611 – which is 48.76% of the GCC’s casualties.
The increase in cases comes as testing has been substantially increased within the county and the country had eased restrictions recently.
Saudi Arabia confirmed its first case, a Saudi national returning from Iran via Bahrain, on 2 March. Within three months, the infection tally crossed 90,000-mark. The number of virus cases have risen from 28,656 cases on May 4 to 93,157 less than a month later.
Though the cases are soaring, the overall comparison shows that Saudi has reported one of the lowest rates of infections, around 90,000 cases - or 0.267 percent- in a population of over 3.48 crore.
Even though new cases are soaring rapidly, on the brighter side, the number of recoveries from the coronavirus crossed the 50,000-mark, and reached 68,965 or 74.03 % of those infected were recovered, as of today. Saudi Arabia has the highest recovery rate in the Middle East.
Meanwhile, religious authorities in Saudi’s eastern city of Dammam shutdown a mosque after its imam was suspected of having contracted the coronavirus, Saudi local media reported.
The authorities said that the mosque will be completely sterilised during the temporary closure.
The closure is the first of its kind since the country re-opened over 94,000 mosques across the country on Sunday, except in Mecca, in accordance with a plan to gradually return to normalcy.
