The Health Ministry in Saudi Arabia recorded a new case of coronavirus in the kingdom on Tuesday evening, bringing the number of infected persons in the country to 21.
The state-run Saudi Press Agency quoted the ministry as saying that the person was an Egyptian transit passenger travelling from New York to Cairo via King Abdulaziz Airport in Jeddah.
The report said that the passenger was detected using thermal cameras being used to monitor passenger temperature and the person was then isolated and transferred to a hospital in Jeddah.
The passenger, the ministry said, had been in Egypt before flying to the US and returning over the previous 14 days.
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The ministry said it was maintaining health screening at airports and entry points and taking measures to prevent the spread of coronavirus. The news came only days after the kingdom stopped all entry and exit from Qatif province in the east, where many of the country's cases were found.
As well as several foreign nationals who have entered the country after contracting coronavirus elsewhere, several Saudi nationals have contracted the virus either after visiting Iran or interacting with people who were infected there.
Many of Saudi Arabia's Shiite minority travel to Iran for cultural and religious visits. During a Cabinet session on Tuesday, King Salman criticised Tehran for failing to stamp passports of visitors and inadvertently leading to the spread of the virus in Saudi Araba.
He pointed out that without the passport stamps, authorities at airports didn’t know that passengers were coming from Iran and that at least one of these people went on to infect several others upon their return.
Iran is struggling to contain the spread with over 8,000 people infected and 291 dead. About 2,730 people have reportedly recovered.
Several senior Iranian officials have fallen sick or died of the virus.
As well as the measures brought in to contain coronavirus in Qatif, Saudi Arabia has put in place travel bans and closed land borders to travellers. It has cancelled sporting and cultural events and suspended Umrah pilgrimages.
The SPA reported that Al Baha University in the kingdom’s south west trialled their distance learning systems on Wednesday after classes were suspended.
The university's dean, Abdullah Al Hussein, said it was training staff and students on the new systems so that classes can resume online "to ensure the progress of academic plans through the use of modern technologies".
