Egypt’s Health Ministry sends thousands of coronavirus medication bags to families in self-quarantine

CAIRO - 17 August 2020: More than 190,000 bags containing medicine and medical equipment for coronavirus patients have been delivered to those quarantined in houses and their contacts, Egypt’s Health Minister Hala Zayed in a ministerial meeting on Monday said.

This comes a day after President Abdel Fattah El Sisi called upon people to follow preventive measures to avoid the infection in order to reach a zero infection nationwide.

“We must realize that there will be no complacency in dealing with the virus, because this will reflect on society [negatively]. Therefore, the society as citizens, agencies and the state must […] keep public health not affected […], especially in light of opening the schools in winter,” President Sisi said.

Concerning schools, which is set to start in October in Egypt, Zayed said, in the meeting attended by Prime Minister Mustafa Madbouli, that many proposals have been discussed on ways to deal with coronavirus once schools and universities classes resume, adding that the outcome of discussions will be handed to the higher committee to face coronavirus.

Attending the meeting, Chairman of the Egyptian Authority for ‎Unified Procurement, Medical Supply and Technology Management (AUPP) ‎Bahaa el Din Zidan affirmed full readiness to a probable second wave of the novel COVID-19, including through providing medical devices and equipment.

Egypt recorded, Wednesday, 139 new coronavirus (COVID-19) cases, upping the total number of confirmed cases to 96,475, amid calls by the president on citizens to take preventive measures, in order for the country to hit zero new cases soon.

In a statement, Spokesman for the Health Ministry Khaled Megahed said 19 patients have died from the virus over the past 24 hours, raising the death toll to 5,160.

As many as 908 patients were discharged from isolation hospitals after receiving necessary medical care, taking the number of recovered cases to 59,743 so far, the spokesman said.

Statistics for the Ministry of Health and Population revealed last week that the recovery rates for people infected with coronavirus in quarantine hospitals have risen to 53.1 percent for the first time since the beginning of the crisis.