Egyptian prosecutors have launched an investigation into the deaths of at least four coronavirus patients in a public hospital
The governor of Sharqia province has denied allegations by a family member of one of the patients that the deaths were due to oxygen deficiency at the intensive care unit for the treatment of COVID-19 patients. Government Mamdouh Ghorab said the patients died because they had chronic diseases in addition to the virus. The family member, who also filmed the video, provided no immediate evidence to confirm their claim that the oxygen was running out at the hospital.
Egypt, the Arab world’s most populous country with more than 100 million people, is facing a surge in confirmed virus cases and renewed calls on the government to impose a blockade to contain a second wave of the pandemic.
The prosecutor’s office in Sharqia said they were investigating the deaths. According to an official at the Cairo public prosecutor’s office, the hospital director and doctors were questioned, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to inform the media.
According to a local newspaper, the four dead were two women in their 60s and two men, 76 and 44 years old. 36 virus patients are currently being treated in the hospital’s isolation ward, the governor said.
The deaths follow similar allegations by a family member last week that two patients died due to oxygen deficiency in a hospital elsewhere in the Nile Delta. Prosecutors in Menoufiya province on Friday investigated the cause of deaths.
Egypt’s leading health authority has announced that a Chinese vaccine manufactured by Sinopharm has been approved for emergency use, and vaccination will begin within two weeks. Health Minister Hala Zayed said in a televised address on Saturday that negotiations were underway to obtain two other vaccines – one from the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca, as well as one from Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech.
Finance Minister Mohamed Maait said last month that the government had agreed to buy 20 million doses of Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine and 30 million doses of AstraZeneca vaccine, according to state-run Al-Ahram.
Egypt has seen an increase in COVID-19 cases daily over the past few days. The Ministry of Health on Saturday announced more than 1,400 new cases and 54 deaths, one of the highest official daily counts since the start of the pandemic last year.
Overall, Egypt reported 140,878 confirmed cases, including 7,741 deaths. However, it is believed that the actual number of COVID-19 cases in Egypt is much higher, partly due to limited trials and uncounted patients being treated at home or in private hospitals.