More Than 180,000 People Tested in Saudi Arabia
The total laboratory tests taken to detect the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) have increased to more than 180,000 tests so far in the Kingdom.
Tests were carried out at the Ministry of Health’s laboratories and other leading institutions throughout the Kingdom.
“We adopt COVID-19 polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing in which the virus is discovered with high accuracy,” said ministry spokesman Dr. Mohammed Al-Abd Al-Aly.
Al-Aly invited hospitals in the private sector with the capability to conducts PCR tests to cooperate with the ministry’s testing efforts.
A total of 1,088 new cases of COVID-19 were recorded in the Kingdom on Sunday, with the total number of cases reaching 9,362.
Of the new cases, 82 percent are expats and 17 percent are Saudi; 892 were discovered through mass testing activities in over-populated neighborhoods.
“Within only two days, the number of cases discovered through mass testing increased from 50 percent of total cases to 82 percent, which indicates the importance of these activities in eliminating the disease spread and discovering cases at an early stage,” said Al-Aly.
He added that the duration of testing surveys in targeted neighborhoods ranges from days to weeks according to the population density, the number of housing units, effective interaction and the number of cases discovered in that area.
There are currently 7,867 active cases, 93 of them critical. Sixty-nine new recoveries took the total number of recoveries to 1,398, while five new deaths had been reported, raising the death toll to 97.
The latest fatalities were all expats. Four lived in Makkah, the other in Jeddah. They were aged between 37 and 64.
Updates about COVID-19 cases in Saudi Arabia are available at http://covid19.moh.gov.sa
