Over 33.8 million people in Egypt fully vaccinated against coronavirus: Minister

CAIRO – 20 April 2022: Egypt has fully vaccinated 33,820,506 people against coronavirus, Minister of Higher Education and Acting Minister of Health Khaled Abdel Ghaffar said on Tuesday.

Also, a total of 44,649,412 people has received their first coronavirus vaccine shots, the minister said in a conference organized by the American Chamber of Commerce in Egypt.

The coronavirus vaccination campaign has reached 54.8 percent of the targeted people who are above 18 years of age and 48 percent of the targeted people who are above 12 years of age, he added.

The Health Ministry said Saturday that the average of the daily new coronavirus cases dropped to 124 during the past week, while the average number of coronavirus related deaths declined to 6.

In a statement, Spokesman for the Health Ministry Hossam Abdel Ghaffar said the daily average of recoveries recorded 260, bringing the total number of recoveries to 444,002.

Earlier this month, the ministry said the rates of daily coronavirus vaccination during the holy month of Ramadan has come between 100,000 and 150,000 daily doses.

The Cabinet has announced easing coronavirus restrictions in mosques during the holy month, including lifting a two-year-ban on Ramadan charity banquets known as “Mawaid Al-Rahman” where poor people gather in streets around huge tables of cooked food.

On 14 April, Egypt’s Qena governorate has been declared free from coronavirus for the first time since the outbreak of the virus in March 2022, said the Ministry of Health and Population in a statement.

The ministry added that all the PCR samples for suspected cases or travelers in the governorate tested negative for the virus over the past 15 days.

The ministry attributed the reason to the high vaccination rates and booster doses given to citizens. He added that medical teams across the governorate’s hospitals commit to their national duty to deliver the vaccine to all citizens.

On April 6, 2022, the ministry also declared the northern Egyptian governorate of Beheira free from coronavirus cases for the first time since the start of the pandemic.

Beheira has been one of the Egyptian governorates with the highest coronavirus vaccination rates, the ministry said, quoting Hany Gemeia, deputy undersecretary of the ministry in Beheira.