Daily COVID-19 roundup: July 12

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Here are the latest figures on COVID-19 as of Saturday, July 11:

New cases	Recovered	New deaths
923	602	67
Total recoveries	Total cases	Total deaths
23,876	81,158	3,769

 

New law to compel new graduates to accept work placements after 7,000 abstained from registering

Following a months-long delay in new doctor placements, the Health Ministry has announced that a new law on the assignments will be applied to March’s cohort of medical graduates.

Doctors who have declined their assignments will be subject to the new law, announced Dr. Sahar Helmy, who heads the ministry’s General Department for Assignments.

It effectively forces the hand of 7,000 newly qualified doctors, who had abstained from registering under the system in protest in March this year, after the Health Ministry neglected to respond to concerns about the new assignment system raised by the Doctors Syndicate in October. 

Doctors had expressed opposition to the new assignments system introduced in 2019 since it required doctors to carry out long stints in isolated rural hospitals for wages as low as LE2,000 a month, as part of the comprehensive health insurance plan.

According to the new law, doctors who refuse to take up their assignments can face prison terms of up to five months and fines of up to LE500. These penalties are to be doubled during times of war and during epidemics.

Since the coronavirus pandemic hit Egypt in March 2020, the Health Ministry has assigned doctors who did not register a preference to isolation hospitals across the country.

While the bungling of the graduates’ assignments delayed the entry of thousands of new doctors into the workforce amid the pandemic, it has also come alongside existing concerns about pay and protection for doctors.

While a new law on compensation for medical professionals looks to raise the sums offered to those who get ill due to their work, and to create a fund to support their families, doctors continue to be exposed to dangerous working conditions.

According to reporting from Cairo24, deputy head of the Baltim Isolation Hospital Dr. Mohamed Hafez worked for 100 consecutive days before being granted leave. After the prime minister instructed governors to ensure doctors took no leave for two months in June, doctors have been threatened with harsh punishments as a consequence for taking time off work, Al-Manassa has reported.

Over the weekend, the number of doctors who have died as a result of COVID-19 infection has increased to 125 since the start of the pandemic, according to Doctors' Syndicate Council member Dr. Ibrahim al-Zayat. Among those who died due to COVID-19 this weekend were:

Dr. Rimon Emad Fargallah Assad, an assistant professor at the Fayoum Medical School 

Dr. Yasser Shaqawy, cardiologist and ICU specialist

A number of medical workers also tested positive for COVID-19 yesterday including three doctors in Beheira and an ambulance supervisor in Kafr El Sheikh. 

 

What were officials saying about COVID-19 on Saturday?

“COVID-19 is not airborne… the WHO is floundering” 

 — Dr. Hossam Hosny, head of Scientific Committee for Combating COVID-19

“The virus is not generally airborne in street for example, but it can be airborne in narrow places” — Dr. Amgad al-Hadad, an immunity and allergies professor

Egyptian scientists are pushing back against the World Health Organization’s announcement that emerging evidence suggests that the novel coronavirus may be transmitted through the air.

Dr. Hosny of the Scientific Committee for Combating COVID-19 blasted the international organization’s latest announcement as “floundering,” explaining that there would be millions of cases in Egypt by now if the virus is airborne. Hosny asserted that droplet transmission was how the coronavirus spreads.

 Dr. Amgad al-Hadad was less critical, but also attempted to tone down the implications of the WHO’s announcement by saying that the virus is only airborne in narrow places with bad ventilation. 

Last Thursday, the WHO acknowledged that the coronavirus may linger in the air in crowded indoor spaces in releasing a new scientific brief on the virus. "There is some evidence emerging, but it is not definitive," said Dr. Benedetta Allegranzi, the WHO's technical lead for infection prevention and control, at a press conference on Tuesday. "The possibility of airborne transmission in public settings, especially in very specific conditions — crowded, closed, poorly ventilated settings — cannot be ruled out."

The WHO brief follows the publication Monday of an open letter from 239 scientists asking the agency to reconsider its position on aerosol transmission. The term refers to microscopic viral particles that can linger in the air and infect people who inhale clouds of those aerosolized particles.

"There is some evidence emerging, but it is not definitive," said Dr. Benedetta Allegranzi, WHO's technical lead for infection prevention and control, at a press conference Tuesday. "The possibility of airborne transmission in public settings, especially in very specific conditions — crowded, closed, poorly ventilated settings — cannot be ruled out."

The coronavirus may linger in the air in crowded indoor spaces, spreading from one person to the next, the World Health Organization acknowledged on Thursday.

The W.H.O. had described this form of transmission as doubtful and a problem mostly in medical procedures. But growing scientific and anecdotal evidence suggest this route may be important in spreading the virus, and this week more than 200 scientists urged the agency to revisit the research and revise its position.

Both experts celebrated the latest drop in Egypt’s record of daily infections as an outcome of the government’s social distancing and obligatory mask-wearing policy. 

 

“The number of daily swabs conducted is still the same. The reduction in swabs is for the secondary swab [usually used to confirm the first swab]” — Dr. Nancy al-Gendy, director of the Health Ministry’s Central Labs

“Talking about the peak of coronavirus is premature” — MP Ayman Abou al-Ela

 

As daily infection numbers sustain a significant drop, with 923 infections recorded on Saturday making it the lowest daily rate since May, MP Dr. Ayman Abou al-Ela, a member of the Parliament’s Health Committee, has warned against reading too much into the numbers. Abo al-Ela suggested that next week is the real test, since it will mark fourteen days since the state reopened public gathering places.

After some suggested that the drop in infection numbers reflected a drop in the number of tests being conducted, Director of the Health Ministry’s Central Labs Dr. Nancy al-Gendy is quoted in the press as saying that the number of tests conducted daily remains the same for first swabs. Second-round swabs, usually conducted to avoid false negatives, were eliminated from Egypt’s testing protocol a few weeks ago.

 

Coexistence with COVID-19

 After a suspected COVID-19 infection among its employees, the main headquarters of the Egyptian General Tourist Guides Syndicate in Cairo’s downtown will shut down temporarily, the syndicate has announced in a statement.

The syndicate said that its board will convene to decide on the next steps to take.  

In the meantime, Tourism Minister Khaled al-Anany took a tour of his own over the weekend. Anany said that the government did not expect many foreign tourists in July after reopening the sector, but that he was pleased that tourists are beginning to arrive, noting that tourists from Switzerland, Belarus and Ukraine have been heading for the Red Sea, Sharm El-Sheikh and Marsa Matrouh, where resorts, hotels and restaurants have reopened at 50 percent capacity. Two flights a day have landed at Sharm El-Sheikh's airport since July 3, Anany said. 

Since Egypt will ultimately be looking for more than three countries to feed its tourist industry, which in normal times accounts for as much as 12 percent of GDP, Anany appears to be lobbying other countries to resume flights in order to allow their citizens to visit Egypt.

According to a report from Al-Shorouk, Anany held a meeting with the diplomatic missions of 24 EU countries to discuss resuming tourism.  

 

Working with COVID-19

Kuwaiti authorities have said they will not allow Kuwaiti sponsors of foreign labor to penalize employees for absence during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The sponsorship system, whereby a Kuwaiti employer vouches for a foreign employee to the government in order to secure residency papers for the employee, also operates in other Gulf countries, as well as Jordan and Lebanon.

According to coverage in Al-Shorouk, many Kuwaiti sponsors have filed notices with local authorities accusing employees they sponsor of absence without leave; a first step to cancelling their sponsorship.  

Egypt’s Labor Force Ministry made the announcement that Kuwait will not consider any absence notices submitted by sponsors during the COVID-19 pandemic on Friday. Kuwaiti authorities have said that canceling the absence notices serves to protect foreign labor and prevent sponsors from laying workers off in order to cut costs.