By Joanne Serrieh

DUBAI -- Qatar reported 957 new coronavirus cases and 54 recoveries, taking the total number of active cases to 10,168, the health ministry announced on Monday.

The country has not recorded any new deaths, keeping the death toll at 10.

A total of 85,709 people have been tested so far in Qatar, with 3,420 people tested over the past 24 hours.

The ministry said: “Most of the new cases registered are due to expatriate workers that work in different occupations who have been in contact with previously discovered cases, as well as recording new cases of COVID-19 among groups of workers from outside the industrial area who were identified through testing by the Ministry of Public Health.”

“The remainder of new cases infected with the virus have come from citizens and residents who have contracted the virus from members of their families, who in turn had contracted the virus through their workplaces or other places where they had been to exposed to infected people. All the new infected cases have been quarantined where they are receiving the necessary medical care.”

The ministry added: “The noticeable increase in the number of confirmed new cases of coronavirus is due to several reasons, including that the spread of the virus has begun to enter the peak stage where numbers are expected to continue to increase before they begin to gradually decline.” -- Al Arabiya English