Majority of Hajj pilgrims will be from abroad this year: Ministry

Hesham Saeed, assistant deputy minister for Hajj and Umrah

The largest share of Hajj permissions this year will be for pilgrims coming from outside Saudi Arabia, Hesham Saeed, Assistant Deputy Minister for Hajj and Umrah Services, told Al Arabiya TV.

Saeed clarified that this is because pilgrims from outside the Kingdom weren’t able to perform Hajj over the past two years due to the pandemic.

No country will be excluded from performing Hajj, Saeed said, indicating that the Kingdom, as usual, welcomes all Muslims wishing to perform Hajj from all over the world based on the stated rules and controls.

He pointed out that the distribution of quotas and numbers of pilgrims among countries is carried out on a proration basis, (1:1,000 of the population), in addition to fulfilling the required health conditions, noting that the Kingdom is working on determining the quotas for different countries.

The Ministry of Hajj and Umrah decided to raise the number of pilgrims from inside and outside the Kingdom to one million this year, with the quota allocated to each country while considering health requirements, according to data compiled by Argaam.

The Ministry stated that pilgrims for this year’s Hajj season should be under the age of 65years, provided that they have received basic COVID-19 vaccine doses approved by the Saudi Ministry of Health.

Pilgrims coming from outside Saudi Arabia are required to submit a negative COVID-19 PCR test result from a test done 72 hours before departure.