Kuwait bans prison visits over coronavirus

Cairo: Kuwait authorities have banned visits to prisons for two weeks as part of the Gulf country’s efforts to bring the new coronavirus under control, Kuwaiti newspaper Al Rai reported Sunday.

All employees in prisons have also been ordered to wear protective face masks.

The measures are aimed at protecting prisoners from the disease, an unnamed security official told Al Rai.

“All inmates in the central prison are in good health. No case of the novel coronavirus has been detected among them,” the source added.

In recent weeks, Kuwait has stepped up precautions against the spread of the fatal ailment. They include closing educational institutions for two weeks.

On Sunday, health authorities in Kuwait reported one more confirmed case of Covid-19, linked to travel to Iran. The new case raises to 46 the total number of the infections recorded in the country to 46.

Bahrain, another Gulf country, has also raised its anti-Covid-19 alert after 41 infections have been confirmed so far there. Most of the cases are in people who have recently returned from Iran, hard hit by the virus.

Bahraini health authorities are checking those returnees in their houses after they tested negative for the virus, an official has said.

Mobile medical units are sent to areas where those people are living to examine them, Health Minister Faeqa Bint Al Saleh added, according to Bahraini newspaper Akhbar Al Khaleej.

“When their safety is confirmed, they are urged to follow the precautionary measures including staying in isolation at home for 14 days,” she added.

As part of the preventive steps, the returnees from Iran, the minister said, are given a paid medical leave for two weeks.