Minister estimates 40K COVID-19 cases mid-June, presents speculative model of real figures

CAIRO – 1 June 2020: Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research Khaled Abdel Ghaffar presented Monday a model that speculates the real figures of COVID-19 infections and deaths given they are unidentifiable by authorities worldwide.

The model suggests multiplying documented infection figures by 5 and deaths by 10. When applying the model to Egypt's latest figures released on May 31, the total number of infections becomes 117,000 instead of 24,985 by an increase of 6,835 and not 1,536.

The number of infections has been increasing by 5.4 percent daily, and the percentage of deaths has been 3.9.

The minister had speculated that infection cases would reach 20,000 by the end of May, and now estimates that they will hit 40,000 on June 10-13. Further, Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouli stated on Monday that infections will rise over the next 2 weeks.

Egypt recorded 1536 new coronavirus, COVID-19 cases, Sunday, raising the total number of confirmed cases since the outbreak in Egypt to 24985.

Spokesman for the Health Ministry Khaled Megahed said in the daily briefing that 46 patients have died from the virus over the past 24 hours, raising the death toll to 959.

As many as 344 patients were discharged from isolation hospitals after receiving necessary medical care, taking the number of recovered cases to 6810 so far, the spokesman said.

The number of coronavirus patients who had now been retested for the virus and received negative results has reached 6037, he added.