JEDDAH: Saudi Arabia has reported a sharp increase in critical cases of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in the past four days.

There were 799 cases in critical condition on April 11, 842 on April 12, 951 on April 13 and 929 on April 14. The Kingdom reported eight more COVID-19-related deaths on Wednesday. The death toll now stands at 6,781.

The Ministry of Health reported 929 new cases, meaning that 401,157 people have now contracted the disease. There are 8,935 remain active.

According to the ministry, 443 of the newly recorded cases were in Riyadh, 172 in Makkah, 130 in the Eastern Province and 30 in Madinah. In addition, 806 patients recovered from the disease, bringing the total to 385,441 recoveries.

Saudi Arabia has so far conducted 15,973,019 PCR tests, with 52,931 carried out in the past 24 hours.

Saudi health clinics set up by the ministry as testing hubs or treatment centers have helped hundreds of thousands of people around the Kingdom since the outbreak of the pandemic.

Among those testing hubs are Taakad (make sure) centers and Tetamman (rest assured) clinics.

Taakad centers provide COVID-19 testing for those who show no or mild symptoms or believe they have come into contact with an infected individual, while the Tetamman clinics offer treatment and advice to those with virus symptoms, such as fever, loss of taste and smell, and breathing difficulties.

Appointments to either services can also be made through the ministry’s Sehhaty app.

Saudis and expats in the Kingdom continue to receive their jabs of the coronavirus vaccine, with 6,567,807 people having been inoculated so far.

Meanwhile, Makkah municipality launched a vaccination campaign at its headquarters on Wednesday.

The campaign targets municipality employees in order to provide a safe work environment and strengthen efforts to combat the pandemic.

A Ministry of Health field team attended the site to administer the first dose of COVID-19 vaccine under the supervision of the municipality’s human resources department.

The ministry also launched a health awareness campaign under the slogan #Ramadan_Saleem (Healthy/Safe Ramadan) to highlight the importance of adhering to preventive precautions in the holy month to limit the spread of the virus.

Jeddah Municipality monitored 228 violations of preventive measures on Wednesday.

Field teams carried out inspection tours to commercial establishments to ensure compliance with the authorities’ guidelines and precautions resulted in the closure of 65 facilities.

The municipality said that a total of 4,287 joint field trips in 19 sub-municipalities and 15 governorate municipalities found 228 violations, including failure to adhere to social distancing, wearing masks incorrectly, leniency in measuring customers’ temperature and other breaches of preventive instructions.