Saudi Arabian citizens banned from travelling to 16 countries
Countries include India, Lebanon and Turkey…
As Covid-19 cases increase across countries in the Middle East, Asia and beyond, Saudi Arabia has banned its citizens from travelling to 16 countries. The countries include India, Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, Iran and Afghanistan.
The additional list of countries that Saudi Arabian citizens are banned from visiting include Yemen, Somalia, Ethiopia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Libya, Indonesia, Vietnam, Armenia, Belarus and Venezuela.
The number of daily Covid-19 cases have increased in these counties over the past week. Positive Covid-19 cases in the kingdom have remained low, as there have been an average of 540 cases over the last seven days. Since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, Saudi Arabia has had 763,000 confirmed cases and 9,128 deaths.
As concern grows over monkeypox, Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Health stated that there are no confirmed cases, and that the country would be ready to deal with any cases. Monkeypox cases have currently been confirmed in Israel, Switzerland and Austria.
Monkeypox is a rare disease that is typically isolated to areas of Central and West Africa, and is transmitted to humans through close contact with an infected person or animal, or with material contaminated with the virus.
Dr. Abdullah Asiri, Deputy Minister of Health for Preventive Health, said: “There is a standard definition of suspected cases and the way to confirm them and monitoring and diagnosis methods are available in the laboratories of the kingdom.
“Until now, cases of transmission between humans are very limited, and therefore the possibility of any outbreaks occurring from it, even in countries that have detected cases, are very low”.