Egypt's Church issues decisions about resumption of prayers

CAIRO – 26 January 2020: The Coptic Orthodox Church has announced several decisions concerning the resumption of masses and services in Cairo and Alexandria as of January 31.

Masses can be held on any day of the week, with only one person on each bench, the church said in a statement Tuesday. The statement also added that sermons should not last more than 15 minutes.

The statement said that any church that does not adhere to preventive measures or reports cases of Covid infection will be requested to suspend prayer for 15 days.

Sunday school services and other social activities will remain halted, it added.

The church has decided to start abiding by decisions, starting Sunday, January 31.

As for The prayer over the crowns and funerals, one person is allowed to participate in it, while funeral homes and other rituals held in homes continue to be suspended.

Reported daily cases of coronavirus in Egypt continue to decline as Egypt's Health Ministry said in a statement that 669 new coronavirus cases were detected on Monday, the least daily count in a month.

This ups the total number of confirmed cases to 162,486.

Spokesman for the Health Ministry Khaled Megahed said 53 patients have died from the virus over the past 24 hours, raising the death toll to 9,012.

As many as 504 patients were discharged from isolation hospitals after receiving necessary medical care, taking the number of recovered cases to 127,001 so far, the spokesman said.