Egypt’s COVID-19 Deaths Pass 10,000 Mark

On Tuesday evening, Egypt’s Ministry of Health announced 613 new COVID-19 infections in Egypt and 56 new COVID-19 related deaths, raising the officially recorded death toll to 10,000.

The deadly, fast spreading pandemic continues to take dozens of lives in Egypt each day, with the Ministry of Health recently warning that the country could face another COVID-19 wave in April. Though the Ministry expects a rise in the number of cases in the coming weeks, Egypt’s Minister of Health Hala Zayed dismissed concerns regarding the country’s health infrastructure.

According to the Ministry of Health, the total number of officially recorded cases currently stands at 174,426, of which 135,349 patients have fully recovered.

Vaccination efforts

Egypt commenced vaccination of frontline workers in January using the Chinese Sinopharm vaccine.

Egypt first received a batch of 50,000 doses of the Sinopharm vaccine in December 2020 as a gift from the United Arab Emirates. In January 2021, Egypt received its first batch of 50,000 AstraZeneca vaccine doses. It remains unclear how many Egyptians have been vaccinated, with the Ministry of Health recently criticised by Members of Parliament for the slow rollout.

Though Egypt has signed agreements for millions of vaccine doses from various producers, whether and when those vaccines will arrive in 2021 remains unclear.

Despite COVID-19 continuing to spread in Egypt, little is being done to crackdown on violations of health and safety measures. Though an EGP 50 fine was introduced to punish anyone not wearing a mask in public, the lack of mask wearing continues to be while spread, large events continue to be held and social distancing is largely ignored in the country of more than 100 million people.