Saudi Arabia imposes dusk-to-dawn curfew over coronavirus

Saudi Arabia’s King Salman has announced a nationwide dusk-to-dawn curfew from Monday in a bid to limit the spread of the new coronavirus, the latest in a series of restrictions.

The curfew – from 19:00 until 06:00 – will be imposed for 21 days, the official Saudi Press Agency reported, citing a royal order.Deaths from the coronavirus pandemic have topped 15,000 across the globe, according to an AFP tally compiled at 11:00 GMT on Monday from official figures.

A total of 15,189 deaths have been recorded, the majority in Europe with 9,197 fatalities.

Italy is the hardest-hit country with 5,476 deaths, followed by China where the virus first emerged last year with 3,270, and Spain with 2,182.

With a total of 1,395 new deaths reported in the past 24 hours out of 172,238 officially declared cases, Europe is now the continent where the virus is spreading the most rapidly.