KUWAIT: The Minister of Health Dr Khaled Al-Saeed addressed yesterday the Civil Service Commission (CSC) to approve the request of offering financial allowances to all medical staff who dealt with coronavirus (COVID-19) patients and other contagious diseases. The minister indicated in a press release that this came upon the CSC decision 13/2020 of offering financial bonuses for employees working in hazardous, noisy, infected, polluted working environments.

All mentioned categories are always prone to hazardous situations, and infections, which resulted in infecting most of them due to their direct and indirect with COVID-19 patients, he affirmed. The ministry is not informed yet with the CSC response on that matter, requiring the commission to inform the ministry of its decision on that matter in order to allow the Ministry to follow up with the required procedures, he affirmed.

The Health Ministry had announced yesterday 1,329 COVID-19 infections, 3,492 recoveries and one death. Health Ministry spokesman Dr Abdullah Al-Sanad indicated that this brought the tallies of infections and recoveries to 614,344 and 595,156 respectively. The total of deaths stood at 2,530. He indicated that there were 80 patients in ICU due to COVID-19, while there were 16,658 active cases. Some 316 were occupying beds in COVID-19 wards as of yesterday, he added. Swabs, in the same period, reached 20,376 putting the total at 7,489,049, he added. - KUNA