Egypt evacuates 166 stranded nationals from Oman

CAIRO – 8 May 2020: An exceptional flight landed in Egypt’s Marsa Alam International Airport on Thursday night, with 166 stranded Egyptians on board, coming from the Omani capital, Muscat, as Egyptian authorities vowed to repatriate stranded nationals amid the coronavirus crisis.

A source at the airport said the preventive medicine teams have carried out the sterilization process required.

The airport, in the southeast of Egypt, received on Wednesday a plane coming from Juba carrying 35 Egyptian nationals who were stranded by the novel virus, state’s news agency MENA reported.

Quarantine teams of the Red Sea Health Directorate received the passengers to conduct medical check-ups before taking them to their residence in a Marsa Alam hotel where they will spend 14 days in quarantine.

Since the coronavirus crisis started, EgyptAir, the Egyptian flag carrier, has operated many exceptional flights to several countries, including the US, UK, Maldives, Kuwait, South Sudan and Kenya, to bring back stranded Egyptians abroad.

On April 22nd, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi noted that around 3,500 Egyptians are stranded abroad over coronavirus, affirming that authorities are committed to bringing them back despite "hard circumstances".

This comes while 393 people in Egypt tested positive for the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) recently, making the highest daily counts in Egypt so far, and 13 people died with the novel virus, the Health Ministry said on Thursday.

This brings the total number of reported cases and deaths to 7,981 and 482 respectively, the ministry said.

The test results of 2,378 people of the reported cases turned from positive to negative, including 1,887 people who fully recovered.

Also, 72 cases, all of them Egyptians, left hospital after they recovered, according to the instructions of the World Health Organization (WHO).

The ministry revealed that the total number of positive patients at the quarantine hospitals is 1,890, including 211 unstable cases and 41 critical cases.

Egypt starts air bridge to bring home expats stranded abroad

CAIRO - 20 April 2020: Egypt will launch on Tuesday an air bridge to bring back the Egyptian nationals who are stranded abroad due to the outbreak of the novel Coronavirus (COVID-19), officials at the Cairo International Airport said on Monday.