Back to school: Egypt’s guide to new safe academic year

CAIRO – 8 October 2021: Egypt is preparing to start a new academic year for schools and universities on Saturday, its second amid the pandemic.

This year, Egyptian schools and universities will receive students amid strict preventive measures with no intention in advance to cancel classes like last year.

Police forces have intensified its presence around schools to secure the entry and exit of students as well as roads leading to schools.

Female police personnel are participating in securing schools and combating sexual harassment, especially around girls’ schools.

Mass vaccination

As per presidential directives, Egypt is vaccination every one above 18 years of age involved in the education sector in public, private, and public non-profit universities and schools as well the school institutions related to Al-Azhar.

Egypt is also planning to vaccinate high-school students who are even below 18 years of age.

The goal of the health ministry was to administer at least a vaccine shot to everyone in the education sector from employees at the education directorates to staff to students.

In August, Cabinet Spokesman Nader Saad affirmed that vaccination for these categories will be mandatory, meaning that students and teachers have to be vaccinated in order to be able to attend classes.

Earlier this month, Education Minister Tarek Shawki said 8 million doses are needed to vaccinate the high school students.

Health Minister Hala Zayed said 1.6 million employees in the pre-university education sector have been vaccinated.

According to a follow up report by the ministry of education late last month, the school sector has more than 1.6 million employees, among which 286,066 have received two vaccine doses, representing 18 percent.

The number of those who received the first dose totaled to more than 541,000, representing 34 percent, while the number of those who registered to receive the vaccine but have not yet been vaccinate reached 811,445, representing 50 percent.

Only about 25,000, representing 3 percent of the total number of workers, have not registered to receive the vaccine.

Egypt’s vaccination campaign has started in January using various types of imported and locally-made vaccines and vaccinating millions of citizens.

Zayed said the country has received a total of 60 million vaccine doses of AstraZeneca, Sinovac, Sinopharm, Sputnik V, Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson vaccines.

This comes as Egypt has received late last month 1.6 million Pfizer vaccine doses granted as a gift from the US.

Preventive measures

Late in August, the Egyptian Education Ministry highlighted the most prominent measures that should be adhered to during the new school year. This includes:

1- Continuing to apply preventive and precautionary measures to prevent infection with the coronavirus in affiliated educational facilities.

2- Following the instructions included in the plan of the Ministry of Health to prevent and deal with infectious diseases.

3- Commitment to implement everything stated in the guideline to confront the spread of the new virus in schools.

4- Applying periodic sterilization and taking cleaning procedures.

5- Immediate reporting of any suspected case of infection with the virus among any of the employees or students.

6- Full coordination with the Health Directorate in each governorate to follow up on developments in the application of precautionary measures against coronavirus.

7- Calling the Ministry of Health on the hotline 105 for all inquiries about coronavirus.

8- Communicating directly with the Ministry of Health through the hotline to request urgent medical service if any disease symptoms appear inside any educational facility.

9 - Implementing the health conditions that must be met at the level of educational establishments.