Islam’s annual hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia will return to pre-pandemic ranges this 12 months after restrictions noticed the annual non secular commemoration curtailed over considerations concerning the coronavirus, authorities say.

The hajj, required of all able-bodied Muslims as soon as of their life, represents one of many world’s largest gatherings of individuals. Before the pandemic, the pilgrimage drew hundreds of thousands every year to Islam’s holy metropolis of Mecca, residence to the cube-shaped Kaaba that observant Muslims pray towards 5 instances a day.

In 2019, over 2.4 million individuals took half within the pilgrimage. But in 2020, amid the lockdowns sparked by the pandemic, Saudi Arabia drastically curtailed the hajj with as as few as 1,000 residents of Saudi Arabia permitted to participate. It was an unprecedented transfer unseen even throughout the 1918 flu epidemic that killed tens of hundreds of thousands worldwide.