Saudi records decline in new coronavirus cases

The Ministry of Health spokesman of Saudi Arabia, Dr. Muhammad Al-Abdel Ali, has announced a slight decline from 2736 cases on Sunday to 2,593 cases bring the number of cases to 57,345 cases in the Kingdom.

While making the announcement on Monday May 18, 2020, he said, “Females make up 25 percent of the new infections, while males make up 75 percent. Saudi citizens make up 44 percent of the new infections, and expats make up 56 percent.”

The Kingdom has also reported the highest daily number of recovered cases. There were a total of 3,026 recoveries, taking the overall number of recovered cases to 28,748 which is 50% of the total cases.

The majority of the new cases was reported in the capital city Riyadh, where 642 infections were detected in 24 hours.

Makkah had the second highest number of new infections with 510 reported cases. There were 305 infections in Jeddah, 245 in Madinah, 174 in Dammam, 147 in Hufof and 133 in Al-Khobar.

Additionally, there were 71 cases in Qatif, 64 in Taif, 44 in Diriyah, 34 in Dhahran, 33 in Jubail, 23 in Hazm Al-Jalameed, 18 each in Buraidah and Al-Sehen, 16 in Yanbu and 10 in Bqeeq.

“The other cases were recorded in cities and provinces around the Kingdom,” Dr. Muhammad said.

“Eight people died of the virus in areas across the country”, the spokesman added.

“The ministry is planning to double its coronavirus testing program to conduct up to 36,000 COVID-19 tests daily and currently conducts between 15,000 to 18,000 tests daily as part of its efforts to curb the outbreak,” he added.

The total number of coronavirus-related death toll in Saudi Arabia is 320.