Supervisor Elham AbolFateh
Editor in Chief Mohamed Wadie

Coronavirus: Government Expects 30,000 Cases this Week


Tue 02 Jun 2020 | 07:56 PM
Ibrahim Eldeeb

Higher Education Ministry: According to the virtual model, we have 117,000 infections of coronavirus, and we will reach 40,000 by June 10

Every 10 people pass on the infection to 14 other people

We outperformed Israel and Turkey in clinical trails

Dr. Khalid Abdel Ghaffar, Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research, said that the Egyptian government  excelled in the field of clinical research conducted on the pandemic.

Dr. Abdel Ghaffar announced that Egypt conducted 50 of the 64 researches on the African level. Egyptian researchers outperformed several countries in the Middle East such as Israel, Jordan and Turkey.

Dr. Abdel Ghaffar pointed out that the most important areas of clinical research in Egypt included the genetic sequence of the Coronavirus, experiments on laboratory animals and the drug used in its treatment.

Some experiments were conducted on the use of plasma extracted from recovered people during the covalence period.

The minister presented the study named"Using data science to change the spread of the Coronavirus", which conducted in cooperation with an Egyptian research team in the United States of America and under the supervision of Dr. Hisham Al-Askari, Professor of Earth Sciences and Remote Sensing.

The minister said the ministry cannot expect what is related to the spread of COVID-19 and its numbers for a future month, but can forecast the spread of the virus within 10 days after analyzing the numbers issued by the Ministry of Health.

The experts of the ministry recommend officials to identify and take appropriate decisions after setting a future scenario.

The minister explained that monitoring the movement of the population via satellites included measuring nitrogen dioxide in the air as an indicator of human activities. Rate of that gas is linked to the percentage of the emergence of new cases in the regions.

He noted that the intensity and movement of citizens in the last week of May - the last week of Ramadan, appeared in the current rates of infections. The densities of population decreased significantly during the second and third days of Eid, so we will reap the benefits in the coming days.

He said that a decrease in the number of infections was observed on May 15th. A new wave of increasing infections followed, until the total number of injuries reached 20 thousand cases, a figure that has been expected since last April.

He added that Egypt is expected to record 30 thousand cases on 4 or June 5, and recording 40 thousand cases from day 10 to June 13, indicating that the figures announced are equal to one-fifth of the reality in the virtual models and data analysis.

He confirmed that the rate of growth of the virus was between 8 to 10%, then it became steady at an average of 5%, and the rate of growth rose to 6.5% after the infected cases rose from a thousand daily cases.

Dr. Abdel Ghaffar added that according to this rate, we have not yet reached the status of a broken virus growth rate Coronavirus or even the low number of Corona cases recorded daily.

On the scale of infection, the minister said that the infection measure that monitored by the ministry for people with Coronavirus and its prevalence rate was 1.4%, meaning that every 10 people pass on the infection to 14 other people.

Dr. Abdel Ghaffar pointed out that a comparison between Egypt and Italy revealed the daily change of confirmed cases.

However, the decline in epidemiological curve in Egypt did not reach the same curve as Italy, because the increase in numbers began in Egypt late in March while it began to increase in Italy early February.

Mortality rate is less than 3.9% of the infections

According to the minister, according to the virtual model of data analysis, the number of cases recorded by Egypt is 117 thousand cases by 6 thousand cases per day. However, what is monitored exactly is five times less, and the death rate until May 30 reached 3.9% of the total confirmed cases.

Personal protection

At the end of his speech, Dr. Abdel Ghaffar stressed that there are several factors can affect the increase or decrease of cases.

The most important factor is the need for personal protection for every citizen in society, in addition to wearing masks from the moment of leaving the house, and in public transport and in the government departments.

Contributed by Ahmed Moamar