Health Minister Sheikh Dr. Basil Al-Sabah announced on Tuesday that the current spread of the Coronavirus is divided by 60 percent of citizens and 40 percent of residents, indicating that a large part of the infected expats work for Kuwaitis in their homes. This came in a comment by the Health Minister at the extraordinary session of the National Assembly held today, to discuss government measures and policies in dealing with the emerging coronavirus (COVID-19) and the mutated strains.
“The infection is widely spread among citizens, gatherings and failure to comply with health precautions are the reason for transmitting the infection, and it is mostly spread between the ages of 18 to 40 years,” he said.
He explained that the recent decisions were taken in order to reduce the speed of the spread of infection, with the aim to ensure the Ministry of Health’s ability to continue to accommodate all patients. “How can hospitals accommodate those who have heart attacks, those who need emergency procedures and regular day patients if hospitals were full of Coronavirus patients?,” he asked.
“Society is divided into two parts, the first can receive the vaccine, and the second cannot receive it, and they are the children, indicating that the spread of the pandemic will decrease with the vaccination,” he noted. “The closure of some commercial activities, such as gyms and salons, came as recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) and prestigious universities, as they are among the places where the spread of infection is frequent due to the nature of their activities,” he explained.
“Kuwait is one of the first countries in the world to request a PCR examination at the airport since February of last year, indicating that this examination is the most accurate in detecting the virus between any other devices in airports,” he continued. He also explained that the Ministry of Health requested examination certificates, which have a validity of 72 hours, because obtaining the examination certificate requires one to two days.
“Regarding the reasons for the decision of changing quarantine from home to institutional for travelers coming to the country, it was made to prevent the spread of the new strain inside the country, so that a greater epidemic problem does not occur, it may cause greater economic damage than the current one, and we are forced to close and apply complete lockdown and take more severe measures to stop the increase of infections and their repercussions,” he added.
“The effectiveness of the vaccines reaches 90 percent according to the various approved methods, meaning that 10 percent of people could still be infected, and if that happened, their infection would be asymptomatic,” he said with regard to the efficiency of the vaccines. The Health Minister said on the reasons of the delay in receiving (COVID-19) vaccination that “we did not accept distributing unapproved vaccines, which was the reason of the start of the vaccination plan last January.”
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