China-Africa summit: Sisi urges ensuring safety of medical teams amid coronavirus crisis

CAIRO – 15 June 2020: Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi on Wednesday called for prioritizing the safety of medical teams in the African states amid the coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis, as he gave a speech in a virtual Chinese-African summit.

This comes while Chinese authorities have rushed to contain a second wave of the deadly virus that emerged in the capital, Beijing, after two months with no new infections nationwide.

During the summit, President Sisi urged allocating adequate funding to guarantee the availability of required medical and preventive supplies, as well as to contain the economic and social implications of the crisis.

Sisi affirmed the need for international consolidation to back the developing nations, especially in Africa, including discharging or rescheduling debts that African nations have to repay, in order to enable these states to prepare their incentive packages for their economies and preserve their development gains.

China’s President Xi Jinping, South Africa’s President and current Chair of the African Union Cyril Ramaphosa, Senegalese President Macky Sall, Director-General of the World Health Organization Tedros Adhanom and Head of the African Union Commission Moussa Faki took part in the summit.

Africa has so far confirmed a total of more than 259,000 coronavirus cases, more than 7,000 deaths and over 118,700 recoveries, according to John Hopkins University tallies on Tuesday June 16.



Earlie in June, Sisi has directed the Egyptian government to apply the highest standards of infection control and provide the required medical supplies to protect all medical staff and help them fulfill their duties, amid the novel coronavirus crisis, an official statement read.

Sisi’s remarks took place in a meeting with Prime Minister Mustafa Madbouli and a number of ministers. The president voiced appreciation for the great efforts made by the medical teams during such exceptional period.

This comes while 74 Egyptian doctors have died so far with the deadly virus, according to officials.

During the meeting, the president urged finding a suitable mechanism for cooperation between the Ministry of Health and the hospitals of the private sector, with the aim of making use of all available medical institutions in the northeastern African country, to provide coronavirus detection and treatment services to citizens at a reasonable cost.

Sisi urged intensifying awareness campaigns to educate citizens about ways to deal with the spread of coronavirus, especially preventive measures required to avoid infection.

As around 653,000 students are preparing for the Thanaweya Amma (third year of secondary school) tests starting June 21st for about a month, Sisi affirmed the need to take all required measures, in coordination with the Ministry of Education and relevant state institutions, to secure students and related staff during exams.

Egypt has recorded 1567 new coronavirus cases on Tuesday raising the total number of confirmed cases since the outbreak in Egypt to 47,856.

Spokesman for the Health Ministry Khaled Megahed said in the daily briefing that 94 patients have died from the virus over the past 24 hours, raising the death toll to 1,766.

As many as 401 patients were discharged from isolation hospitals after receiving necessary medical care, taking the number of recovered cases to 12,730 so far, the spokesman said.

The number of coronavirus patients who had now been retested for the virus and received negative results has reached 14,144, he added.