KUWAIT: The health ministry has informed airlines and local aviation authorities that it has not received any reports of forged PCR tests among passengers who came to Kuwait since August 2020, Al-Anbaa Arabic daily reported yesterday quoting an informed source. Speaking on the condition of anonymity, the source said that the ministry discusses increasing the number of approved clinics for PCR tests in several countries.

Kuwait had issued a decision on February 7, 2021 banning entry of non-Kuwaitis for a period of two weeks, and the decision has since been extended until further notice. Meanwhile, the same newspaper reported yesterday that the health ministry plans to provide special refrigerators to store the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine in Shaab, Seddiq, Masayel, Naseem and Shalahi clinics, so that vaccination can be provided there by next week.

Kuwait's Ministry of Health had announced Tuesday recording 1,446 new coronavirus infections and eight related deaths in the previous 24 hours. The new figures took the total cases in the country up to 269,681 and deaths to 1,535 respectively, noted the ministry's spokesman Dr Abdullah Al-Sanad.

He pointed out that some 1,377 more people had been cured of the virus over the same period, raising the total of those who have overcome the disease to 252,888. He added that the number of people hospitalized with the virus stood at 15,258, with 216 of them in intensive care units. - KUNA