The kingdom, the largest among the six Gulf Arab states, has recorded more than 367,800 cases and 6,370 deaths so far, the highest tally in the region.
Another approach has been to use network-based methods, which are significantly faster but theoretically less accurate than phylogeny-based methods ,,.
Since people from all over the world come to Makkah and Madinah for Hajj and Umrah, Saudi Arabia has not only trained its people in many languages to facilitate the pilgrims but also put up signs in various languages in the two Holy Cities.
This preparedness can be attributed to previous global initiatives to support African countries in mitigating outbreaks of other viruses that have enhanced sequencing capacities in the region.