The head of the health committee in Egypt, Ashraf Hatem, has warned that despite a decline in Covid-19 cases in the North African country, vaccination rates remain very low.
Egypt Independent quoted him on Monday as telling the Al-Shams channel: “Citizens have forgotten that we have coronavirus and that cases were severe."
He told the TV channel that if citizens continued to ignore mask rules and social distancing measures, cases would climb once more.
“The vaccination rate in Egypt is less than 4% which is a very small percentage, and we hoped that the fourth wave would not come until about 50% of the citizens had received the vaccination,” he said.
Egypt Today reported on Monday that the country has passed the third wave of the pandemic and that daily Covid-19 cases were less than 100 for the first time since October last year.
Egypt produced a million Sinovac vaccine doses locally and imported millions more of the vaccine jabs with the intention to vaccinate 40% of its 100 million population by the end of 2021.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), as of July 12, a total of 4,851,349 vaccine doses have been administered in the country.
Meanwhile, the health ministry has recorded 284,024 cases of the coronavirus. Since the outbreak of the pandemic, Egypt has reported 227,612 recoveries and 16,487 deaths.
African News Agency (ANA)