Cairo University denies unvaccinated students access to exams

CAIRO: Unvaccinated students will not be allowed to sit midterm or final term exams at Cairo University this academic year, the university president Mohamed Othman El-Khosht said on Monday, unless they can provide a recent "negative" PCR test.

Midterm exams have already started at Cairo University and will continue until Thursday, Al-Ahram newspaper reported Monday.  

On 24 October, the Supreme Council of Universities announced that students in Egypt would not be allowed to enter university campuses unless they showed proof they did not have coronavirus or had been vaccinated.

Unvaccinated students are required to submit PCR tests on a weekly basis.

One month earlier, Minister of Higher Education Khalid Abdel-Ghaffar announced that only vaccinated students would be allowed to live in university dorms.

Egyptians are also not allowed to enter government-run institutions without showing proof of vaccination, according to a recent government decision.

On Monday evening, the Egyptian health ministry reported a total of 870 Covid-19 cases and 58 deaths, among the population of about 101,000,000.

Yet it is believed these numbers are inaccurate as infected cases are not usually reported to the ministry and patients often self-isolate.

Sources have told The New Arab that Egyptian authorities are not recording many Covid-19 deaths to avoid public panic.