President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi said on Sunday that Egypt was managing the new coronavirus epidemic “transparently”, denying the accusations of opacity that the authorities have recently been subjected to.
“We have been transparent since the beginning of the crisis and our data reflect reality (…). Why hide anything?” Asked Mr. Sissi in remarks broadcast on television and kept at the occasion of an official celebration of Egyptian women’s day.
While Cairo officially registered its first case of new coronavirus in mid-February, its death toll reached 294 infected people and ten deaths due to Covid-19 on Saturday evening, according to the Ministry of Health.
In recent weeks, doubts have been expressed about the reality of the figures put forward by Egypt, the most populous country in the Mediterranean with its 100 million inhabitants. Several countries have reported contamination of people who have recently stayed there.
Wednesday, at a press conference in Cairo, the regional director of the World Health Organization (WHO) for the Eastern Mediterranean, Ahmed al-Mandhari, had in particular called on the states of the Middle East to share more information with his agency, in order to contain the pandemic.
In his speech, Sissi also announced measures to help the Egyptian economy “cope with this unprecedented crisis”.
Among these, the injection of 20 billion pounds (1.2 billion euros) in support of the stock market, the fall in natural gas and electricity prices for the industrial sector and the allocation of an envelope of one billion pounds (59.4 million euros) for exporters.
Already in early March, Mr. Sissi had announced that an envelope of 100 billion pounds (or 5.9 billion euros) would be devoted to the fight against the virus.
To limit its spread, Cairo has recently decided to close schools and universities, places of worship, museums and archaeological sites, airports and the nighttime closure of cafes, restaurants and nightclubs until March 31.
Source: SlateAfrique
