Kingdom takes lead in fight against virus

Number of daily infections steadily decreasing in Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Health announced 232 new coronavirus disease (COVID-19) cases on Monday, with numbers remaining steady and daily counts of between 200-350 for more than two weeks.

Monday’s numbers bring the number of total cases in the Kingdom to 357,360 since the beginning of the pandemic in early March.

Riyadh recorded 67 new cases. Madinah and Jeddah reported 18 new cases each, while Makkah and Dammam had 13 new cases apiece.

Only seven cities are recording cases in the double digits, according to the ministry’s daily COVID-19 dashboard.

The ministry said there were 393 new recoveries, raising the total number of recoveries to 246,802. The country’s recovery rate has climbed to 97 percent.

There are 4,662 active cases, 659 of which are in critical care. Ministry spokesman Dr. Mohammed Al-Abd Al-Aly said there was a halt in rising case numbers, and that the number of critical care patients was decreasing due to community cooperation and the proper implementation of health protocols by authorities.

“The number of confirmed cases has stabilized in the past week,” he said, adding that people’s adherence to health protocols was the reason for both the steady decrease in numbers and the stabilization.

“We continue to have control over the coronavirus spread in the

Kingdom. It’s important to continue adhering to the protocols until we announce the recovery of the last infected patient.”

There were 12 new deaths recorded on Monday, raising the death toll to 5,896.

The government is continuing its efforts to curb the spread of COVID-19 infections and to record cases.

There have been 39,224 PCR tests carried out in the past 24 hours, raising the number of tests the Kingdom has performed so far to 9.6 million.

The ministry has urged people showing any symptoms of coronavirus disease to visit one of its Tetamman (Rest Assured) clinics to be tested for the virus. There are about 235 of the clinics across the Kingdom, and appointments for tests can be booked through the Sehaty app.

The ministry has also set up health centers, called Takkad (Make Sure), to cater to people who show no or only mild symptoms of the disease, but think they might have come into contact with someone who was infected.