Coronavirus Updates

Saudi Arabia will reopen its land borders with the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Bahrain after a four-month closure as part of the kingdom’s easing of coronavirus restrictions.

Kuwait has shut down 46 shops during the Eid al-Adha holiday for violating precautionary coronavirus instructions, state news agency KUNA reported.

The Health Ministry is calling on Ukraine to prevent Jewish pilgrims from Israel to travel to Uman for Rosh Hashanah due to fears of spreading the novel coronavirus. The Ukrainian government agreed to let at least 5,000 people attend the annual religious gathering with the possibility of that rising to 8,000, Ukrainian Chief Rabbi Rav Yaakov Dov Bleich said.

Germany is already experiencing a second wave of the novel coronavirus, the head of the German doctors’ union said in a newspaper interview published Tuesday. “We are already in a second, shallow upswing,” Susanne Johna, president of Marburger Bund, told the Augsburger Allgemeine newspaper.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned on Tuesday that the world is facing a “generational catastrophe” because of school closures during the coronavirus pandemic. Schools closed in more than 160 countries in mid-July, affecting over 1 billion students.

The results of a national survey in Italy released Monday show that only 2.5% of Italians have antibodies to protect against the novel coronavirus. The hardest-hit Lombardy region reported the highest number of antibodies with 7.5% while the country’s two main islands of Sicily and Sardinia only reported 0.3% of the population with antibodies.

Germany this week will start mandatory testing of travelers returning from countries with a high risk of COVID-19 infection, Health Minister Jens Spahn said Monday.

Non-Kuwaiti passengers from 31 countries with travel bans can now enter Kuwait as long as they have stayed in the previous country they were in for at least 14 days, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation said on Sunday. Passengers need to be tested for the coronavirus and submit a certificate showing a negative result.