Jeddah: Children who are more than seven years old are allowed to enter the Two Holy Mosques only if they are fully vaccinated, after nearly a long break of 30 months of restrictions on youngsters because of COVID-19 concerns.

The Hajj and Umrah Ministry tweeted that they permit the children to enter the Grand Mosque in Makkah. The Prophet’s mosque in Madinah was available only if the children are fully vaccinated with their bost doses COVID-19.

Saudi health authorities have already started distributing the vaccine to children aged between five and 11.

As per the daily report on the electronic permits issued for Umrah, prayers and visits, the ministry stated that they had issued more than 29.4 million permits to enter the Grand Mosque over the last seven months. More than 3.7 million were granted to worshippers for access to the Prophet’s Mosque during the same period.

As per the data based on Thursday, more than 305,900 Grand Mosque entry permits were distributed and up to 27,300 were distributed for visiting the Prophet’s Mosque.

Furthermore, the ministry stated that the daily number of worshippers entering the Grand Mosque for prayers only was 82,571, while the daily average number of people conducting Umrah was estimated to be 64,300.

Its figures showed that the Grand Mosque was witnessing high viscosity during Asr, Maghrib, and Isha compared to Fajr and Dhuhr prayers before in the day.

Mostly the pilgrims of the Umrah was appeared to prefer performing their rituals after dark, and those who wanted to perform Umrah were given three hours to perform and complete their pilgrimage, but most of them completed it in 2 hours of period.

On Thursday, 11,060 passes were issued to people who had applied for permits to pray at Al-Rawdhah Al-Sharifah at the Prophet’s Mosque.

Also, on Thursday, 16,249 permits were issued for those wanting to visit the Prophet’s tomb.