Riyadh
\nSaudi Arabia said on Saturday it was lifting most Covid restrictions including social distancing in public spaces and quarantine for vaccinated arrivals, moves that could facilitate the arrival of Muslim pilgrims.
\nThe decision includes suspending \u201csocial distancing measures in all open and closed places\u201d including mosques, the official Saudi Press Agency (SPA) cited an interior ministry source as saying.
\nMasks will only be required in closed spaces, according to the decision, which came into effect on Saturday.
\nThe Saudi kingdom, which is home to Islam\u2019s two holiest places in Makkah and Madinah, will no longer require vaccinated travellers to provide a negative PCR or rapid test before their arrival in the kingdom or to quarantine, SPA said.
\nThe Covid-19 pandemic has hugely disrupted Muslim pilgrimages, which are usually key revenue earners for the kingdom, bringing in some $12 billion annually.
\nHosting the pilgrimages is a matter of prestige for Saudi rulers, for whom the custodianship of Islam\u2019s holiest sites is their most powerful source of political legitimacy.
\nIn 2021, the coronavirus outbreak forced Saudi authorities to dramatically downsize the Haj for a second year, and just 60,000 fully vaccinated citizens and residents of the kingdom took part.
\nSince the start of the pandemic, Saudi Arabia has registered more than 746,000 coronavirus cases, 9,000 of them fatal, in a population of some 34 million.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Riyadh Saudi Arabia said on Saturday it was lifting most Covid restrictions including social distancing in public spaces and quarantine for vaccinated arrivals, moves that could facilitate the arrival of Muslim pilgrims. The decision includes suspending \u201csocial distancing measures in all open and closed places\u201d including mosques, the official Saudi Press Agency (SPA) cited an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-248086","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n