Egypt expected to flatten coronavirus curve after upcoming rise: Minister

CAIRO – 29 June 2020: The number of coronavirus (COVID-19) cases in Egypt during the past days has been stable, Minister of Higher Education Khaled Abdel Ghaffar, adding that this state will make the scenarios in the coming days more predictable.

Egypt is expected to then flatten the curve and then to have the number of coronavirus cases rising before it starts to decrease, Abdel Ghaffar said. He called on citizens to abide by preventive measures of wearing masks and maintaining social distancing as the only way for the numbers to drop.

The minister noted that President Abdel Fattah El Sisi has supported the ministry to work on researches to find a cure for coronavirus.

Earlier in June, Egypt’s 23-year old drug manufacturer Eva Pharma announced starting producing antiviral Remdesivir as the first expected therapy for the novel virus, Reuters reported.

Producing the Ebola drug, Remdesivir, Eva Pharma becomes the first licensed manufacturer of this treatment in the African continent. The company said earlier in June it received a license from the US-based Gilead Sciences, which made Remdesivir, to start production and distribution to 127 countries.

Eva Pharma will produce 500,000 doses of the drug per month to be sold locally, general manager Amgad Talaat said, adding that it will cost less than LE 2,000 ($124.07) each. The drug was sent to quarantine hospitals, Talaat added.

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) on Thursday said it received a recommendation from its human medicines committee urging conditional approval of Remdesivir to treat adults and adolescents, who are also suffering from pneumonia.

Eva Pharma also started producing 1 million tablets of Japan’s Favipiravir drug sold under the brand name Avigan, and is set to make them available within July, Talaat added.

Egypt recorded, Sunday, 1265 new coronavirus cases, upping the total number of confirmed cases to 65188.

In a statement, Spokesman for the Health Ministry Khaled Megahed said 81 patients have died from the virus over the past 24 hours, raising the death toll to 2789.

As many as 400 patients were discharged from isolation hospitals after receiving necessary medical care, taking the number of recovered cases to 17539 so far, the spokesman said.