Covid: Egypt summons man for video of ‘patients dying after hospitals run out of oxygen’

Egypt has summoned a man who filmed a video apparently showing panicked medics in a government-run hospital struggling to keep coronavirus patients alive due to critical oxygen shortages.

The harrowing clip, which was widely shared on social media, sparking outrage, allegedly depicts several patients in intensive care at Al-Husseiniya hospital in the northern governorate of Sharqiya dying after the hospital purportedly ran out of oxygen.

In it a man’s voice can be heard saying “there is no oxygen, everyone… has died”, before filming a nurse who appears to be crouched on the floor in despair, while medics try to resuscitate patients in the background.

The governor of Sharqiya, Mamdouh Ghorab, denied the allegations saying that four patients passed away at different times because they suffered from chronic diseases in addition to the virus.

The health ministry's spokesman, Khaled Megahed, insisted that all hospitals have sufficient oxygen supplies to treat Covid-19 patients, including Al-Husseineya.

Egyptian prosecutors have nevertheless opened an investigation into the deaths and the Sharqiya Police Department summoned Ahmed Mamdouh as part of an “investigation into the incident”, the privately-owned news website Youm7 reported on 4 January.

The website did not mention further details about whether charges would be pressed against him.

The hospital director and doctors are also being questioned, according to an official at the public prosecutor's office in Cairo.

The four dead were two women in their 60s and two men, 76 and 44 years old, according to a local news outlet. There are currently 36 virus patients being treated at the hospital's isolation ward, the governor said.

Mamdouh, who is apparently a relative of one of the patients, offered no immediate evidence to back up his claim that the hospital ran out of oxygen.

But his video followed a similar clip that was also shared online last week purportedly showing a similar panicked scene in another government hospital in a different Nile Delta governorate. In that footage a woman can be heard screaming about oxygen supplies being cut off as relatives appear to be administering CPR in one room.

Over 142,000 people have been infected with Covid-19 in Egypt while nearly 8000 people have died. However, the actual number of cases are thought to be far higher, due to limited testing and uncounted patients who are being treated at home or in private hospitals.

There have been renewed calls for a nation-wide lockdown amid a recent surge in infections.   The Health ministry announced over 1,307 new cases and 64 fatalities on Sunday, one of the highest official daily tallies since the start of the pandemic last year.

The authorities have  announced that a Chinese vaccine made by Sinopharm has been approved for emergency use, and inoculations would begin within two weeks. In televised comments Saturday, Health Minister Hala Zayed said negotiations were also underway to procure two other vaccines — one from Oxford University and AstraZeneca, as well as one from Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech.

According to state-run daily al-Ahram, Finance Minister Mohamed Maait said last month that the government has contracted to purchase 20 million doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine and 30 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine.

Agencies contributed to this report