Prosecutors in Egypt’s Sharqia province said Sunday they were investigating the deaths of four coronavirus patients at a public hospital after a video of nurses struggling to keep the patients alive was shared on social media.
Reports said the deaths were caused by a lack of oxygen at the Husainiyah government-run intensive care unit treating COVID-19 patients. But Governor Mamdouh Ghorab said the patients died because they suffered chronic diseases in addition to the virus.
The four dead were two women in their 60s and two men, 76 and 44 years old, according to a local news outlet.
Egypt's top health authority has announced that a Chinese vaccine made by Sinopharm has been approved for emergency use, and inoculations would begin within two weeks. In televised comments Saturday, Health Minister Hala Zayed said negotiations were also underway to procure two other vaccines — one from Oxford University and AstraZeneca, as well as one from Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech.
Finance Minister Mohamed Maait said last month that the government has contracted to purchase 20 million doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine and 30 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine.
Egypt has seen a spike in daily reported COVID-19 cases in recent weeks.
The Health Ministry announced over 1,400 new cases and 54 deaths on Saturday, one of the highest official daily tallies since the start of the pandemic last year.
Overall, Egypt has reported 140,878 confirmed cases, including 7,741 deaths.
