KUWAIT CITY, Feb 23: In the past 48 hours since Kuwait International Airport reopened for arriving passengers at dawn on Sunday, 48 fl ights have arrived with 1,442 passengers on board – 989 citizens and 453 domestic workers, reports Al-Rai daily. In a recent statement to the daily, Director of Operations Department at the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) Mansour Al-Hashemi disclosed that 25 aircraft arrived on Sunday with 713 passengers on board – 382 citizens and 331 domestic workers.

He said the number of flights as at 7:00 pm on Monday reached 22 flights with 729 passengers – 607 citizens and 122 domestic workers. He added that majority of the passengers are from other Gulf countries, Turkey and India. He affirmed all these arrivals underwent PCR test and are currently under institutional quarantine at the designated hotels in the country.

He asserted all those who arrived in the country registered on ‘Kuwait Mosafer’ platform for citizens and ‘Belsalamah’ for domestic workers; confirming they completed all the procedures as per the directives of the concerned authorities, including the PCR test certificate and hotel reservation for those who are required to undergo institutional quarantine.

Quarantine
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Health is studying the possibility of exempting those who have received the coronavirus vaccine from the mandatory quarantine, which is usually slapped on the travelers when they return from abroad or those who have come in contact with the persons infected with the virus, reports Al-Rai daily. Reliable health sources told the daily the application of such a measure is likely to coincide with achieving an appropriate rate of vaccination for the target group, which is expected to be completed by next April in light of the efforts exerted to expand the group of vaccine recipients.

The sources emphasized that “with the acceleration of the pace of vaccination and the continued availability of vaccines expected by the end of the month of Ramadan, the lockdown will become history. Kuwait Health Ministry’s spokesperson Dr Abdullah Al-Sanad announced that 18,452 persons completed their vaccination yesterday. Al-Sanad noted that this shows the amount of efforts to absorb the biggest number of people possible.

He also mentioned the number of cases in the ICU since the beginning of January have reached 46, meanwhile in February 18th it reached 153, and the number of the deaths have reached 25 and in February it reached 80. The ministry’s official showed that the percentage of recovered cases have reached 93.6 percent, it recorded a 0.1 percent increase, and the total number of recovered cases have reached 14,706 since the beginning of February.

He pointed out that the number of infections have increased 13.1 percent, as it recorded 19,146 cases since the beginning of February. He went on to urge nationals and expatriates alike that abiding by health precautions, mainly, following social distancing rules, is the only way to halt the spread of the virus.