Presidency Spox: Egypt puts students’ safety, health during exams atop priorities

CAIRO – 12 June 2020: As high school exams approach, President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi ensured Thursday that students’ safety and health atop the government’s priorities as it fights coronavirus.

The president also reviewed a comprehensive plan, worth more than LE 1 billion, set by the Ministry of Education in cooperation with the ministries of health and interior, and the Armed Forces to protect students during the exams, presidency spokesperson Bassam Rady said in phone statements with the Egyptian TV channel.

Rady added that Egypt allocated LE 700 million for the first stage of exams.

As part of the plan, students should come two hours earlier than the exam time for check-up, and applying the precautionary measures.

The spokesperson further added that the number of exam rooms was doubled from 28,000 to 55,000 across the country, and the number of supervisors was also doubled.

Discussing Egypt’s approach to partial closure and not full closure like other countries, Rady explained that there is no successful approach, and that each country applies what it finds “suitable” for its circumstances.

He gave examples of countries like Japan, whose circumstances resemble Egypt’s in having huge population, and did not applying the PCR test on a wide scale, adding that countries that applied full closure are witnessing very high rates of infections compared to Egypt and the region’s countries.

Rady also noted that a number of infections is not yet discovered in Egypt, but the rate of infections and deaths in Egypt, given the daily record announced, equals around 2.5 percent, which is a normal rate.