Egyptian actress Ragaa El-Gedawy during an appearance on a TV show in 2015
Popular Egyptian actress Ragaa El-Giddawy passed away on Sunday following a lengthy battle with the coronavirus, her daughter Amira Mokhtar announced on Facebook.
El-Giddawy, 81, is one of Egypt’s most beloved and prolific actresses with a career dating back to the late 1950s.
She had been hospitalised on 24 May after being infected with the virus, and had since mostly been kept in the intensive care unit (ICU) at an isolation hospital in Ismailia, east of Cairo.
El-Giddawy's infection was announced days after she finished shooting the soap opera Le'bet El-Nesyan (Game of Oblivion), which was screened during the holy month of Ramadan.
The veteran actress made her debut in popular Egyptian film Douaa Al-kawrawan (The Nightingale's Prayer) in 1959.
She had appeared in hundreds of films, plays and TV shows throughout a fruitful six-decade career, collaborating with almost all of the country's best writers, directors and actors of successive generations.
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