Egypt’s government will not allow unvaccinated public workers to enter government buildings from next month, reported The BBC.
The government issued a cabinet notice on Sunday in which it said workers would have to be vaccinated or take a weekly Covid test to be allowed to enter into government buildings from November 15.
On Saturday, Egypt’s Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly called for awareness campaigns in governorates explaining the importance of vaccines.
“It must be ensured that all workers in the administrative authorities of the governorates are vaccinated, and soon any employee who has not been vaccinated will not be allowed to enter, especially with the wide availability of vaccines,” he told a meeting.
According to Dr. Hala Zayed, Egypt’s minister of health and population, the health authorities currently have 60.5 million coronavirus vaccine doses and the number of available vaccines will reach 70 million by the end of this month.
Egypt is currently using China’s Sinopharm vaccine, the UK’s AstraOxford vaccine, Russia’s Sputnik V, Sinovac, and Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
On Saturday, the government received over one million doses of the Pfizer BionNTech coronavirus vaccine donated by the United States via the COVAX initiative.
Amid the declining number of covid-19 cases, Egypt’s cabinet has allowed the opening up of bathrooms in mosques from Wednesday. The bathrooms were closed in March last year as part of measures to contain the spread of coronavirus. The government has also allocated a billion Egyptian pounds to address the pandemic.
As per data from Egypt’s health ministry, the country has administered more than 30 million vaccine doses out of a population of over 100 million people.
Egypt has reported more than 318,000 coronavirus cases so far including 17,970 deaths.
In related news, Zimbabwe has also barred unvaccinated employees from entering government offices from Monday following the lapse of the compulsory Covid-19 vaccination deadline last week.
