The weekly reports are scheduled to be issued on Saturdays as per directives by Khaled Abdel-Ghaffar, the country’s acting health minister, according to a statement.

The decision was taken after the country started witnessing a “consistent” decline in infection rates in the last two weeks, with a retreat in the occupancy rates at isolation hospitals, Hossam Abdel-Ghafar — the spokesperson for the ministry — explained.

Following a remarkable rise in the two preceding months as a result of the fifth wave of the pandemic, with the country reporting 2,000 cases a day since late January, the country’s daily coronavirus infection and death tolls have been on a downward trend since the last week of February.

On Monday, Presidential Adviser for Health Affairs Mohamed Awad Tag El-Din said Egypt has gotten past the “difficult phase” of the latest wave of the pandemic, attributing January and February’s spike to the highly infectious Omicron variant.

The spokesperson expressed his hope that the decline of infections locally and globally continues, stressing the importance of getting vaccinated.

He also urged citizens to continue adopting anti-coronavirus safety measures, especially during the month of Ramadan that will start in early April.

On 22 December 2021, Egypt detected its first three cases of the Omicron variant in Egyptian nationals returning from abroad at Cairo International Airport.

Since the pandemic hit Egypt in February 2020, the ministry has reported a total of 495,373 coronavirus infections, including 24,277 deaths and 424,831 recoveries.