“The counting of people in their homes, hotels, hospitals, prisons and streets continued on Wednesday and will continue for two weeks,” Ibrahim Al-Himaizi told Arab News.

He added that 600 enumerators had begun counting worshipers in the Grand Mosque using special maps provided by the Presidency of the Affairs of the Two Holy Mosques. The maps show all areas inside the Haram.

“Foreigners living under bridges and along streets were also counted,” he said, adding that the enumerators were specially trained on how to deal with them so as not to scare them off.

Al-Himaizi said women enumerators in Makkah and Jeddah also continued to count women in hospitals, hostels, protection homes and other relevant places on Wednesday.“We collect data and revise it in our offices before passing it over to the general department of statistics, which uses scanners to verify the data,” he said.

He said more than 13,000 enumerators are carrying out the counting in the Makkah region, including about 5,900 in Jeddah, which has the second largest census center in the Kingdom after Riyadh. Al-Himaizi said they were able to overcome the language barrier with foreign residents through a pool of interpreters fluent in a number of languages including English, French, Urdu, Hindi and different African languages.

He said most of the enumerators were Saudis, including 50 women in Jeddah alone.