Kuwait imposes 20-day 'total curfew' from May 10 to curb coronavirus

People wait at the fairground which has become a health center for coronavirus testing in Kuwait City on 12 March 2020. [Jaber Abdulkhaleg – Anadolu Agency]

Kuwait will enact a “total curfew” from 4pm (1300 GMT) on Sunday through to May 30 to help to curb the spread of the new coronavirus, the Information Ministry said on Twitter on Friday, Reuters reports.

Further details of the curfew will be announced soon, it said.

Kuwait on April 20 expanded a nationwide curfew to 16 hours a day, from 4pm to 8am, and extended a suspension of work in the public sector, including government ministries, until May 31.

On Friday the Gulf state announced 641 new coronavirus cases and three deaths, bringing its total number of confirmed cases to 7,208, with 47 deaths.

The number of cases in the six Gulf Arab states has risen steadily to almost 86,000, with 486 deaths, despite containment measures including curfews, the grounding of passenger flights and the closure of most public venues.

The number of coronavirus cases in Saudi Arabia exceeded 35,000 on Friday.

READ: The Gulf’s coronavirus challenges

Unless otherwise stated in the article above, this work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. If the image(s) bear our credit, this license also applies to them. What does that mean? For other permissions, please contact us.