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Here are the latest figures on COVID-19 as of Wednesday, May 13:

Doctors Syndicate appeals to president to intervene against ‘dangerous’ Health Ministry testing, isolation protocol

In a letter to President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on Wednesday, the Doctors Syndicate has claimed that the Health Ministry’s new guidelines on infection control, particularly the updated testing and isolation measures, could lead to even greater rates of infection among medical staff. 

Although the Doctors Syndicate has repeatedly raised concerns about access to testing, the Health Ministry’s Disease Control Department issued a new protocol making it still harder to get hold of the more accurate PCR tests.

Direct contact with confirmed cases of coronavirus is not enough to warrant testing unless doctors show symptoms of the virus. Doctors themselves will be responsible for “self-diagnosing and reporting” symptoms, according to the May 11 Health Ministry document, published Wednesday by Cairo24 and Masrawy.

The new Health Ministry protocol also asks hospitals to stop deploying medical staff on 14-day-on, 14-days’ isolation shift rotations, claiming that there is no need for the isolation period. Hospitals have also been ordered not to shut down any departments or facilities, whether or not cases are discovered in the departments.

The newly issued protocol comes after concerns mounted during May regarding staff shortages and hospital closures due to COVID-19 cases among medical staff 

Last week, the Health Ministry had to send out a medical team to provide healthcare services in Aswan’s Teaching Hospital after a major outbreak among staff put the hospital out of action.

The Doctors Syndicate blasted the protocol change on Wednesday, describing it as “very dangerous.” In a letter to the president, the syndicate asked for his “urgent intervention to change these measures.” If doctors work when they could be in the incubation period with no symptoms, this “could infect their colleagues, their family members, and eventually other citizens,” the syndicate writes in the letter. 

The syndicate affirmed that early testing is in the “best interests of the health system and the economy,” affirming that  the “cost of PCR tests” would be “much less than that of treating new infections.” 

Former Doctors Syndicate deputy head Dr. Mona Mina likewise railed against the Health Ministry on Wednesday, saying that the ministry’s decision would allow for an “unprecedented spread of the infections,” while leaving cases to go under the radar “because tests are prohibited.”

Beyond the top news, several other items related to COVID-19 made it to the headlines in Thursday’s press.

• Early Thursday morning, officials from the Health Ministry told Masrawy about a three-phase plan to get Egypt “coexisting with the coronavirus,” with phase one due early in June. It would include “strict measures,” and should persist until “numbers decrease steadily over a period of two weeks.” Regular screening for symptoms, mask-wearing, and maintaining low footfall in public would be key. The 25-page plan is available on the Ministry of Health’s website. 
• It’s not certain how this squares with statements coming from elsewhere, which call for tighter measures in the more immediate future: 
  • After Member of Parliament Sherine Farrag became the first MP to contract the coronavirus, calls emerged from other parliamentarians for a stricter approach to the pandemic. Deputy Speaker Soliman Wahdan said late on Tuesday night that it was an “indicator that everyone could be exposed” and “we must remain vigilant,” and even joining the cohort now calling for total lockdown. In a phone-in to a Tuesday night talk show, he said, “I hope we roll out a 15-day lockdown.” 
  • MP Dalia Youssef also said Wednesday that the “partial lockdown is an ineffective strategy” likely to cause “an economic crisis that is still more severe;” a comment directed to those reluctant to back a tougher lockdown out of concern for the economy. Youssef proposed a 10-day total lockdown instead.
  • Deputy chair of Parliament’s budget committee also complained about the Health Ministry’s protocol, saying it doesn’t allow for testing before someone is showing symptoms.
  • Without “daily data on the number of PCR tests conducted per day,” the Health Ministry’s daily epidemiology update is “inaccurate,” said to Dr. Alaa Awad, a professor at the Higher Education Ministry-affiliated Bilharzia Research Institute. It’s impossible to get a grip on the “scope of the crisis” without that piece of contextual information, he said on Wednesday.

• An urgent call for more quarantine beds also came on Wednesday from the Doctors Syndicate, who said that comments are flooding in from doctors on the ground describing overcrowding at dedicated quarantine facilities.
  
• And an outbreak of COVID-19 infections ran through another teaching hospital, with Dr. Mohamed Safey Eddin, director of the Matareya Teaching Hospital, announcing that 19 members of the hospital’s medical and administrative staff have tested positive for COVID-19. The 19 cases were announced after tests were administered to 54 staff members, and more test results are expected to trickle in the upcoming few hours, said Dr. Safey Eddin. The index case is a nurse whose father-in-law had COVID-19, the director claimed
• Meanwhile, a letter from the Nurses Syndicate to the Cabinet has requested that nurses who have died as a result of COVID-19 get the same honors as members of the police and Armed Forces who die during national service. The nurses’ professional union specified that it wanted access to the same kind of “public honor,” “pensions” and “support funds” afforded to security personnel, and more recently to doctors.
• Local press also reported on further infections among staff at a number of institutions across Egypt:
  • The Vice President of Assiut University tested positive for COVID-19 yesterday and was moved to a quarantine hospital, reports Cairo24.
  • Two deputy public prosecutors in the Monufiya governorate tested positive yesterday for COVID-19, sources from the governorate’s health directorate told Cairo24.
  • Head of the General Physical Therapy Syndicate’s Luxor branch passed away yesterday of complications from COVID-19 yesterday, the syndicate announced.
  • A police secretary reportedly tested positive in Beheira governorate, a source from the governorate’s health directorate told Cairo24. The home village of the police secretary has 21 confirmed cases.
  • More cases among bank employees have been reported as well. An employee in Banque Du Caire’s branch in Belbis city of Sharqiyah governorate has tested positive, prompting the bank to shut down for 14 days and order 28 employees and their families to self-isolate, Cairo24 reports. Earlier on Tuesday, the National Investment Bank in downtown Cairo reported a positive case among employees, but the Bank will not close unless further cases emerge among its staff, Al-Masry Al-Youm reports.