2nd wave of COVID-19 expected in November, Egypt ready for all possible scenarios: official

CAIRO – 27 July 2020:  A second wave of coronavirus (COVID-19) might be expected by next November in Egypt according to Head of the Health Ministry’s coronavirus (COVID-19) committee Hossam Hosny.

He added in statements that this wave comes in conjunction with the influenza virus season which possess a stress and challenge to diagnose patients accurately, especially that Symptoms of influenza and Corona are similar.

Hosny affirmed that the ministry is ready for all possible scenarios and that Hospitals have all quick-diagnoses tools needed for this stage.

The Ministry’s coronavirus committee head said that Egypt has so far received voluntary plasma donors in 15 centers nationwide, saying that convalescent plasma of 420 donors has been accepted, with a success rate of 60 percent in critical and severe cases.

The country now has a large strategic stock of convalescent plasma, Hossam Hosni said, adding that the ministry will announce on Monday the results of plasma injection.

Officials’ remarks on the efficiency of plasma treatment for serious coronavirus cases are contradictory.

Earlier in July, Noha Essam, advisor to the Health Minister told Egypt Today that plasma treatment has shown significant and strong results but it does not work with all cases. Essam added that plasma therapy did not work with cases in critical conditions.

However, in June, Zayed stated that the convalescent plasma transfusion experiment for patients with critical coronavirus (COVID-19) symptoms has shown successful results in Egypt.

The experiment to inject convalescent plasma has contributed to reducing the need for ventilators and increasing the number of recoveries, Zayed said.

On Sunday, Egypt recorded 479 new coronavirus cases, upping the total number of confirmed cases to 92062.

In a statement, Spokesman for the Health Ministry Khaled Megahed said 48 patients have died from the virus over the past 24 hours, raising the death toll to 4606.

As many as 928 patients were discharged from isolation hospitals after receiving necessary medical care, taking the number of recovered cases to 33831 so far, the spokesman said.

Statistics for the Ministry of Health and Population revealed, Wednesday that the recovery rates for people infected with coronavirus in quarantine hospitals have risen to 32.9 percent for the first time since the beginning of the crisis.