Egypt’s Ministry of Health today announced the first death on account of COVID-19 in Egypt. The victim, according to Health Ministry spokesperson Khaled Megahed, was a 60-year-old German national who
was taken to hospital with fever after arriving at the Red Sea resort of Hurghada from Luxor on 6 March. He was placed in intensive care but refused to be transferred to a designated isolation hospital, the ministry said. The Hurghada hospital, Dr Megahed said, has been disinfected and sterilised.
Health authorities in Germany were addressed and notified of the case, since the victim had spent only seven days in Egypt, meaning he had contracted the virus elsewhere before he entered the country.
A day earlier, Saturday 7 March, Health Minister Hala Zayed said that the number of coronavirus cases on board a Luxor Nile cruiser on which COVID-19 cases had been discovered rose to 45. She said that 19 of them were foreign nationals. The boat, she said, carried 171 people on board, including 101 foreigners and 70 Egyptians. They have all been quarantined in an isolation hospital in Marsa Matrouh on the Mediterranean coast west of Alexandria.
According to the World Health Organisation WHO with which Egypt’s Health Ministry works very closely, the number of COVID-19 cases reported in Egypt had reached 49 on 8 March, one of whom died.
Watani International
8 March 2020