A record 7,482 divorces were carried out in February, a 30 per cent year-on-year increase, with local lawyers crediting restrictions on movement with the rise.

Curfews and travel restrictions in response to the COVID-19 pandemic were first introduced in Saudi Arabia that month, The New Arab reports.

Saudi lawyer Saleh Musfer Al-Ghamdi, who received five divorce requests from women in February, told Gulf News that one of them was “a doctor who discovered that her husband married secretly to an Arab resident”.