Egypt’s coronavirus cases have increased by 40 new infections and 6 new deaths, Hala Zayed, Egypt’s Health Minister, said on Saturday. This brings the country’s total number of infections to 576 and 36 deaths. As many as 121 cases have recovered and have been discharged from hospitals, the Health Ministry has announced.
The ministry said that all cases diagnosed negative with the disease officially, known as Covid-19, are isolated in the dedicated quarantine hospitals. According to the latest numbers released by the ministry, five Egyptian nationals, aged between 50 and 65 years of age, died on Friday. These cases were from the Cairo and Damietta governorates.
In a media statement on Friday evening, Zayed said that 20,000 tests have been conducted nationwide, and “the rate of recovering in the country is 28% which is good according to the World Health Organization (WHO)”.
Zayed noted that recovering rates in Upper Egypt is higher than other places in the country, and only 10% of the infected cases needed ventilators.
Until the time of writing, 615,519 coronavirus cases have been reported worldwide, of whom 135,735 cases have recovered. The global death toll globally due to the pandemic has reached 28,717.
The US has reported the highest number of infections, recording 104,860 cases, with 1,711 deaths, surpassing China in number of cases. Italy is still recording the highest number of deaths with 9,134 people so far.
The total of confirmed cases in China where the disease was first detected late in December 2019, is 81,996, with 3,299 total deaths, and 75,099 people have recovered.
Meanwhile, the WHO announced that its team of experts concluded recently a COVID-19 technical support mission to Egypt, aiming to “understand the current situation; review ongoing response activities; provide on-site technical support as needed; and identify strengths and gaps to guide response priorities.”
“After several days of intensive meetings and field visits both inside and outside Cairo, we see that Egypt is making substantial efforts to control COVID-19 outbreak. Significant work is being done, especially in the areas of early detection, laboratory testing, isolation, contact tracing and referral of patients,” said Yvan Hutin, Director for Communicable Diseases in WHO’s Regional Office and mission team lead.
Hutin added further that more needs to be done to contain the outbreak before spreading in the country. He said that Egypt’s strong disease surveillance system and contact tracing efforts have proven effective in controlling managing sporadic and clusters of cases before they can spread.
Egypt now has the capacity to conduct up to 200,000 tests, Hutin noted, explaining that 17 peripheral laboratories nationwide have the capacity to test cases, and additional four will be added soon and university laboratories will also be engaged.
