Compulsory vaccination for Egypt’s university community

The Egyptian government has made COVID-19 vaccination compulsory for students above the age of 18, faculty staff and other workers at both public and private universities.

Hala Zayed, the Egyptian health minister, said the country is experiencing a rising curve in COVID-19 infection rates at a time when registrations to get vaccinated are declining.

While the numbers were still negligible in comparison to many other countries, the trend could lead to higher case numbers by the end of September, especially with the appearance of the Delta Plus variant, which spreads faster.

Zayed said that Egyptian-made Chinese Sinovac shots will be supplied to vaccination centres at university hospitals to vaccinate university workers, students and higher education staff before the beginning of the next academic year, in October. Each institute and research centre will also establish its own vaccination clinic.

The Egyptian Cabinet spokesman, Nader Saad, told the Al-Hayah Al-Youm TV programme on 21 August, that Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly will make an announcement about the way forward for those who refuse to take the vaccine in the educational sector.

COVID-19 status

The Corona Tracker shows that, by 23 August, Egypt had registered 286,352 cases of the disease, including 16,671 fatalities.

Egypt ranked third among African countries with the most fatalities, after South Africa and Tunisia, as of 8 August.

According to the Reuters COVID-19 tracker, Egypt has vaccinated 3.2% of its population of about 105 million people.

Return to face-to-face education

Professor Mohamed Orabi, the deputy dean for postgraduate studies and scientific research at Aswan University in Egypt, told University World News that vaccinating all members of the university community would improve the chances for a return to face-to-face educational activities.

However, returning to in-person education should not mean heading back to a hybrid education system. A new system “should continue on building” digital education, while adding the benefits of face-to-face activities, Orabi said.

While it would be difficult to make the injection, itself, compulsory, Orabi said vaccination could be made a requirement for certain activities. For example, it is compulsory to undergo a PCR test before travelling, and some countries require a COVID-19 vaccination before issuing a visa.

“Similarly, university students who do not like to take the COVID-19 vaccine should not be permitted to attend in-person gathering activities and face-to-face teaching, and may only use online education,” Orabi said.

Professor Hamed Ead, director of the Science Heritage Center at Cairo University, told University World News that making COVID-19 inoculations mandatory in Egypt could hasten a return to in-person education.

“The use of e-platforms for university education during the last two academic years came with weak results and large learning losses for students, which lowered their achievements,” Ead pointed out.

He said the higher education process in the country was in trouble, “and if we don’t adopt compulsory COVID-19 vaccination, it will only get worse”. He added that mandatory vaccination would also be in the interests of universities and other higher education institutions.

There are currently 19 countries that have made COVID-19 vaccination mandatory for specific groups.

They are Australia, the UK, Canada, Fiji, Lebanon, Malta, Micronesia, France, Greece, Indonesia, Italy, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Sri Lanka, Poland, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Turkmenistan and the US.