Egypt COVID-19 Country Case Study

The first case of COVID-19 in Egypt was confirmed on February 14th, 2020 (IMF, 2021a). On March 24th, the government declared a public health emergency followed by a nationwide lockdown aiming to contain the spread of the virus. Among the lockdown measures, the government implemented a two-week curfew (Beschel, 2021), which was later extended to a month (Reuters, 2020).2The curfew applied from 7 PM to 6 AM, during which time all public and private transport was suspended. All educational institutions were shut down until further notice. Shops and malls were closed on weekends and restaurants and coffeeshops were only open for home delivery. Public events such as government meetings and sports events were restricted, a stay-at-home order was imposed with exceptions for essential trips, restrictions on internal movements were imposed, and a total border closure was instituted (Beschel, 2021). Most businesses remained open, but some of them may have reduced their hours to conform to the curfew. During the initial two weeks of lockdown the government also suspended work on megaprojects which led to a substantial decline in workforce on construction sites. An agreement between the Ministry of Housing and the Egyptian Federation for Construction and Building Contractors (EFCBC) to ensure compliance with sanitation and health guidelines allowed for the resumption of work (Beschel, 2021). As shown in Figure 1, Egypt, like the rest of North Africa, had a higher stringency index than the world average during the first two months of the pandemic.