More than a million people benefit from mass COVID-19 testing in Saudi Arabia

More than a million people in Saudi Arabia have benefited from mass COVID-19 testing since the initiative was launched more than two weeks ago, a Ministry of Health spokesman said on Monday.

Field trips are being carried out to enforce control over the spread of the virus in the Kingdom, where there are a total of 18,811 cases.

Of the 1,289 new cases recorded on Monday, 16 percent were Saudi and 84 percent were expats. There are 16,136 active cases, 117 of which are in critical care.

The launch day of the mass screening helped to detect 400 cases earlier this month.

“Over a million people have benefited from the mass testing being conducted, whether it is through medical tests or medical evaluations and active testing,” said the ministry’s spokesman, Dr. Mohammed Al-Abd Al-Aly. “This has helped detect certain areas that may have a high count of cases, and these are targeted via mass testing depending on whether or not they test positive.”

Al-Aly said there were 174 new recovered cases taking the total number of recoveries to 2,531, while five new deaths had been reported, raising the death toll to 144.

Two Saudis, a woman and man in Makkah, and three expats between the ages of 43 to 82 died. They all suffered from chronic diseases.

Al-Abd Al-Aly reminded people to continue following regulations by maintaining hand hygiene, practice social distancing and to stay inside. 

He warned against believing anything that was sourced to the ministry but did not appear on any of its official platforms, reminding people that anything official would be announced there and not through WhatsApp groups or via a third party.