Egypt: COVID-19 vaccination obligatory for those above 18 yrs

CAIRO - 27 December 2021: From now on, COVID-19 vaccination became mandatory for those who are aged above 18 years amid imposing harsher restrictions on non-vaccinated people, announced Egypt’s Ministry of Health on Saturday evening in a statement.

The compulsory vaccination decision was among a set of rules taken by the supreme committee responsible for managing the coronavirus crisis on Saturday, the statement said.

Other rules include accelerating the process of vaccination for a wider number of people in Egypt; facilitating the COVID-19 registration procedures through allocating more points at train and metro stations; giving minors aged between 12 and 18 coronavirus vaccines; administering those who had been vaccinated more than 6 months ago booster doses; imposing harsher restrictions at all Egyptian ground, air, and maritime outlets to monitor any cases of the new mutants; and increasing the number of genomic tests for the positive cases.

Since December 1, 2021, Egypt has imposed a ban for all non-vaccinated people from entering public, governmental, and educational institutions, in a bid to curb the spread of the coronavirus.

Meanwhile, the Health Ministry said 866 new coronavirus cases were detected on Tuesday in Egypt, upping the total number of infections to 380,520.

Health Ministry spokesman Hossam Abdel Ghaffar said 25 patients died from the virus over the past 24 hours, raising the death toll to 21,571.

As many as 760 patients were discharged from hospitals after receiving medical care, taking the number of recoveries to 316,656, it added.

Three days ago during the Cabinet's meeting, on Thursday, Acting Minister of Health and Population Khaled Abdel Ghaffar stated that there are currently 62 million anti-COVID-19 vaccine doses available for use. The minister added that the number of citizens who got the first dose only is 33.8 million while those who received the second one amount to just 20 million.

The number of doses was increased yesterday after the Cairo International Airport received Saturday more than 1.9 million Moderna and Pfizer coronavirus vaccine doses. According to informed sources, the shipment included 462,000 Moderna doses and 1,501,000 Pfizer doses. The shipment was handed to the Ministry of Health, according to the sources.