Egypt reports 97 new coronavirus cases, 5 fatalities in 24 hours

CAIRO - 14 August 2020: The Health Ministry said that 97 new coronavirus cases were detected, upping the total number of confirmed cases since the outbreak of the pandemic in the country to 285,158.

In a statement on Friday, Spokesman for the Health Ministry Khaled Megahed said five patients have died from the virus over the past 24 hours, raising the death toll to 16,609.

As many as 43 patients were discharged from isolation hospitals after receiving necessary medical care, taking the number of recovered cases to 233,772 so far, the spokesman said.

Egypt received on Friday 1,766,400 doses of COVID-19 Vaccine “AstraZeneca” through COVAX, the AstraZeneca company said in a statement.

“We are pleased to move quickly to inoculate Egyptians with the support of the COVAX initiative. With this new batch of COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca, we can better meet the ever-growing number of vaccine registrations that we are seeing across the country and move one step closer towards recovery,”  Egyptian Health Minister Hala Zayed said.

COVAX is a global initiative co-led by the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), Gavi (the Vaccines Alliance) and the World Health Organization, which works with governments and manufacturers to accelerate the development, production and equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines around the world.

"I was delighted to see the arrival of further doses of COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca to Cairo. This is wonderful news for the people of Egypt. On behalf of AstraZeneca, I would like to thank our partners at COVAX and Egypt’s Ministry of Health and Population for making this possible. All partners are working round the clock to ensure that as many COVID-19 vaccines can get to as many people as soon as possible. This milestone further demonstrates the value of governments, industry and others working together to fight against the pandemic,” said Hatem Werdany, Country President for Egypt, AstraZeneca.

Early 2021, Egypt received 2,623,200 shots of the AstraZeneca vaccine through COVAX, according to a statement issued by the United Nations (UN) on May 31, 2021.

To date, 1 billion doses of AstraZeneca’s vaccine have been released for supply to more than 170 countries and accounts for approximately two thirds of COVAX supply to date.