Riyadh: Saudi Arabia will impose limits on the number of pilgrims for this year’s Hajj, a Saudi minister said on Monday, after 3 years of restrictions to curb the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The number of pilgrims will return to what it was before the pandemic, without any age limit,” Hajj and Umrah Minister Tawfiq al-Rabiah told reporters in Riyadh.
The pilgrimage – one of the five pillars of Islam, and which all able, healthy Muslims must perform at least once – is scheduled for June.
In 2019, around 2. 5 million more people participated in the rituals. Over the next two years, the numbers dropped particularly due to the pandemic.
In 2022, only about 900,000 pilgrims, totaling about 780,000 from abroad, were received in Islam’s holiest cities, Mecca and Medina.
At the time, they had to be 65 years old, as well as be vaccinated against COVID-19 and test negative.
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