Saudi Arabia on Monday announced a series of measures to enable avoid the spread of the novel coronavirus through the once-a-year Haj pilgrimage scheduled to take position later on this month.

The Kingdom will restrict the quantity of domestic attendees to close to 1,000 and touching the , Islam’s most sacred monument, will be banned, studies the BBC.

Social distancing will also be imposed.

In standard periods the pilgrimage is a single of the most sizeable times in the Muslim religious calendar.

Some two million individuals have been predicted to vacation to Mecca and Medina this July and August for the yearly gathering.

But only Saudi people will be allowed to attend this yr.

Coronavirus in Saudi Arabia

Monday’s improvement came as Saudi Arabia documented a whole of 209,509 COVID-19 circumstances, although the loss of life toll stands at 1,916.

Previous month, Saudi Arabia had announced that thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, only a “extremely limited number” of people today will be permitted to choose component in this year’s Haj pilgrimage.

So when this year’s Haj will include non-Saudis, those people people need to currently reside within the borders of the Kingdom to be eligible.

This is not the very first time Saudi Arabia has limited participation in the pilgrimage.

Concerning 2014 and 2016, Muslim trustworthy from the Democratic Republic of the Congo and many other African nations around the world had been excluded from the Haj due to Ebola.

The Haj represents an critical resource of money, generally building between $5.3 billion and $6.9 billion for the neighborhood economy, in accordance to Mecca’s chamber of commerce.

In 2019, nearly 2.5 million Muslims carried out the Haj, which includes much more than 600,000 Saudis, according to formal figures.

The yearly pilgrimage is one of the 5 pillars of Islam, which each Muslim must complete at least when if his or her actual physical and economic point out makes it possible for.