translated from Spanish: Egypt: Cancer hospital doctors test positive for virus

At least 17 medical workers at Egypt’s main cancer hospital were quarantined after positive for coronavirus, authorities said Saturday, stoking fears that the pandemic could attack medical centers in the world’s most populous country Arabic. Egypt has about 1,000 confirmed cases and 66 deaths from the pandemic. Authorities have closed schools and mosques, banned public meetings and imposed a night curfew to prevent the virus from spreading among its 100 million inhabitants, of whom a fifth live in the capital, Cairo.Hatem Abu el-Kassem, director of the National Cancer Institute, said three doctors and 12 nurses tested positive for the virus. Other employees of the center, which is affiliated with Cairo University and treats hundreds of cancer patients a day, will undergo the COVID-19 test, the disease caused by the virus, he added. The university later said that the total number of infected people was 17 people. The Institute will be partially closed for three days for sterilization, and only the emergency room will operate. Several doctors turned to social media to criticize the institute’s management for not taking restrictive measures before. Maggie Mousa, a downtown anaesthetist, tweeted that one of her closest friends was infected. He accused those responsible for mismanagement and negligence for failing to decree measures after the first case appeared more than a week ago.” They refused to take steps to protect and isolate the institute,” he said. Cairo University said it launched research to determine the steps taken by the center to prevent the spread of the virus. Coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms in most infected people, which recover within a few weeks. But it is highly contagious and can lead to serious illnesses and even death in older people or with previous diseases such as cancer. More than a million people have spread worldwide, with more than 50,000 killed, and more than 200,000 have already recovered, according to a Johns Hopkins University count.Egypt’s Ministry of Health announced an increase in cases on Friday , with 120 new contagions and eight dead, his daily record since he reported his first case in February. The worst coronavirus outbreak in the Middle East is in Iran, where the Ministry of Health reported another 158 deaths on Saturday for a total of 3,452, with 55,743 confirmed cases. The department’s spokesman, Kianoush Jahanpour, explained that more than 4,000 patients are in serious condition.

Original source in Spanish