Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques Chairs Cabinet's Virtual Session

NEOM, Aug 17, 2021, SPA -- Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, Prime Minister, chaired the Cabinet's virtual session today. At the outset of the session, the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques briefed the Cabinet on the message he sent to Kuwait's Emir Sheikh Nawaf Al-Ahmed Al-Jaber Al-Sabah as well as the phone conversation with Algeria's President Abdelmadjid Tebboune, in which the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques affirmed the Kingdom's support for Algeria's efforts to combat fires that swept through a number of Algerian regions, issuing directives to provide urgent humanitarian aid for the affected people in Algeria. The Cabinet reviewed a number of reports on the developments in the region and the world, reiterating the Kingdom's firm position in supporting the Yemeni people and its legitimate government as well as the regional and international efforts that aim at reaching a comprehensive political solution to the crisis in Yemen, in accordance with the three references in order to enable the Yemeni people to live in a country that enjoys security, stability and development, and to stop violations committed by the terrorist Houthi militia against the Yemeni people, as these violations obstruct all political solutions aiming to end the crisis. The Cabinet pointed out that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is following-up with great interest the current situation in the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, expressing hope that the situation in Afghanistan will stabilize as soon as possible, reiterating its support for the Afghan people. In a statement to the Saudi Press Agency (SPA), Acting Minister of Media Dr. Majid bin Abdullah Al-Qasabi said that the Cabinet was briefed on the preparations and arrangements undertaken by authorities concerned with serving the visitors of the Two Holy Mosques, as Umrah requests from various countries of the world started to be received and the overall capacity was increased to 2,000,000 Umrah performers per month. These preparations and arrangements aim at providing the highest level of care for the visitors of the Two Holy Mosques while performing the rituals in safe healthy environment in light of the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic and the spread of new variants of the virus. The Cabinet reviewed the latest developments of the COVID-19 pandemic locally and globally, as well as the latest statistics and indexes of the health situation in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in light of the decrease in the number of COVID-19 cases and critical cases as well as the increase in the number of citizens and residents receiving vaccine, where the total number of administered vaccine doses exceeded 32,000,000, in addition to the continuation of taking necessary measures that preserve the public health. --SPA