Egypt’s Medical Syndicate has called on both the Prime Minister and the Minister of Health to equate medical staff who died of COVID-19 with war heroes. The union said that many doctors have been infected with coronavirus while working. Some of them passed it onto their families and some of them have died. The number of health care workers infected with coronavirus has increased by more than 100 cases, 10 per cent of the total cases, according to official statistics from the Ministry of Health. Aswan Governorate announced that 24 people in the governorate were infected; half of them were doctors working in the isolation hospital, while the number of infected health care workers at the National Cancer Institute reached 26.

Health care workers in Egypt suffer from a lack of preventive medical supplies such as masks, disinfectant and gloves, and many of them are forced to work without protection under pressure of their managers who threaten them with arbitrary dismissal if they complain or refuse to work.