Saudi Arabia reports sudden rise in critical virus cases

Jeddah: Saudi Arabia has reported a sharp increase in critical cases of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in the past five days, according to an Arab News report.

There were 799 cases in critical condition on April 11, 842 on April 12, 951 on April 13, 929 on April 14, 985 on April 15. The Kingdom reported ten more COVID-19-related deaths on Thursday. The death toll now stands at 6,791.

Of the new cases, 463 were recorded in Riyadh, 164 in Makkah, 140 in the the Eastern Province, 34 in Asir, 33 in Hail, 30 in Madinah, 21 in Jazan, 20 in Tabuk, 16 in Najran, 11 in the Northern Borders region, and six in Al-Jouf.

The total number of recoveries in the Kingdom increased to 386,102 after 661 more patients recovered from the virus.

Saudi Arabia has so far conducted 15,973,019 PCR tests, with 52,931 carried out in the past 24 hours.

Saudi health clinics set up by the ministry as testing hubs or treatment centres have helped hundreds of thousands of people around the Kingdom since the outbreak of the pandemic.

Among those testing, hubs are Taakad (make sure) centres and Tetamman (rest assured) clinics.

Taakad centres provide COVID-19 testing for those who show no or mild symptoms or believe they have come into contact with an infected individual, while the Tetamman clinics offer treatment and advice to those with virus symptoms, such as fever, loss of taste and smell, and breathing difficulties.

Appointments to either service can also be made through the ministry's Sehhaty app.

Saudis and expats in the Kingdom continue to receive their jabs of the coronavirus vaccine, with 6,567,807 people having been inoculated so far.

Meanwhile, Makkah municipality launched a vaccination campaign at its headquarters on Wednesday.

The campaign targets municipality employees to provide a safe work environment and strengthen efforts to combat the pandemic.

A Ministry of Health field team attended the site to administer the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine under the supervision of the municipality's human resources department.

The ministry also launched a health awareness campaign under the slogan #Ramadan_Saleem (Healthy/Safe Ramadan) to highlight the importance of adhering to preventive precautions in the holy month to limit the spread of the virus.

Field teams carried out inspection tours to commercial establishments to ensure compliance with the authorities' guidelines and precautions resulted in the closure of 65 facilities.

The municipality said that a total of 4,287 joint field trips in 19 sub-municipalities and 15 governorate municipalities found 228 violations, including failure to adhere to social distancing, wearing masks incorrectly, leniency in measuring customers' temperature and other breaches of preventive instructions.