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CAIRO (Reuters) – Saudi Arabia will allow pilgrims residing within the country to undertake the umrah pilgrimage starting October 4, after a seven-month hiatus due to coronavirus concerns, the state news agency reported. SPA.
Umrah is an Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina that takes place at any time of the year and which attracted 19 million people last year. Saudi Arabia had frozen umrah in March.
It will now allow 6,000 citizens and residents within the kingdom to perform umrah daily, representing 30% of a revised capacity of 20,000 that takes into account preventive health measures, SPA added. That will expand to 75% of capacity on October 18.
Starting November 1, Saudi Arabia will allow visitors from specific countries deemed safe to perform umrah at 100% of revised capacity, until the end of the pandemic, SPA said.
This year, Saudi Arabia held a limited haj, the largest pilgrimage that generally draws around 3 million people, for a few thousand citizens and residents.
Official data shows that haj and umrah earn the kingdom about $ 12 billion a year.
On Tuesday, Saudi Arabia reported 330,798 total coronavirus cases and 4,542 deaths, as cases in the Gulf region surpassed 800,000.
(Reporting by Nayera Abdallah and Samar Hassan, written by Nafisa Eltahir, Edited by Sandra Maler and Sam Holmes)
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