{"id":70619,"date":"2022-07-06T13:46:49","date_gmt":"2022-07-06T13:46:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/news\/saudi-arabia-expects-1-million-people-in-mecca-for-largest-hajj-since-pandemic-struck"},"modified":"2022-07-06T13:46:49","modified_gmt":"2022-07-06T13:46:49","slug":"saudi-arabia-expects-1-million-people-in-mecca-for-largest-hajj-since-pandemic-struck","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/news\/saudi-arabia-expects-1-million-people-in-mecca-for-largest-hajj-since-pandemic-struck","title":{"rendered":"Saudi Arabia expects 1 million people in Mecca for largest hajj since pandemic struck"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>One million Muslim pilgrims were converging on Saudi Arabia&#8217;s holy city of Mecca on Wednesday for the largest hajj since the COVID-19 pandemic severely curtailed access to one of Islam&#8217;s five pillars . Saudi Arabia&#8217;s decision to allow some 850,000 Muslims from abroad to make the annual pilgrimage, which begins Thursday, marks a major step toward normality after two years of a drastically scaled-down hajj restricted to Saudi residents. The 1 million foreign and domestic pilgrims participating are still far fewer than the 2.5 million Muslims who traveled to Mecca in 2019 for the pilgrimage, typically one of the world&#8217;s largest gatherings. Those performing the ritual this year must be under 65, vaccinated against COVID-19 and have tested negative for the coronavirus within 72 hours of travel. The pilgrims are chosen from millions of applicants through an online lottery system. Saudi officials inspected the holy site Wednesday and stressed their readiness to receive pilgrims with the goal of &#8220;maintaining public<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Muslim pilgrims are converging on Saudi Arabia&#8217;s holy city of Mecca for the first pilgrimage there since the coronavirus severely curtailed access.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[62,59,69,55,102],"class_list":["post-70619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-coronavirus","tag-health","tag-religion","tag-society","tag-world"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70619"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70619\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}