No coronavirus in Egypt, claims Health Ministry

Egypt is completely free of the coronavirus, claimed Amr Qandeel, the head of preventative medicine at the Ministry of Health.

The privately owned newspaper Al-Masry Al-Youm reported on Thursday that the ministry evaluated lap reports from patients in Cairo, Daqahlia, Minya and Sohag who reported symptoms consistent with conditions caused by the coronavirus, but that the samples all came back negative.

On its official website, the World Health Organization (WHO) defines the coronavirus as a group of “viruses that may cause a range of illnesses in humans, from the common cold to SARS.”

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) stated on October 30 that six cases of the virus were detected in the United Arab Emirates, three in the UK, three in Tunisia,  121 in Saudi Arabia (51 of which resulted in death), seven in Qatar, two in Jordon, one in Italy and two in France.

"The first coronavirus case was detected in 2012," Mahmoud al-Fouly, an ear, nose and throat doctor and consultant at Cairo University, told Mada Masr.

He explained that corona is a respiratory virus that is “mostly airborne” but that has an unclear mode of transmission, and that was renamed as the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus in 2013.

Symptoms of the virus are similar to those of pneumonia, including a high fever (above 38 degrees Celsius), cough and pulmonary distress, Fouly explained.

“It becomes fatal in patients with underlying medical conditions such as liver or kidney disease or simply old age,” the doctor continued.

He added that the flu shot can boost immunity against the virus but would not completely guard against it.