Egypt has provided around four million citizens with on-the-ground health awareness training on the preventive measures against the coronavirus pandemic since the outbreak of the pandemic's last winter, Minister of Health Hala Zayed said.

According to an official statement on Friday, Zayed said the awareness training is part of the ministry’s goals to intensify education and health awareness campaigns for the awareness-raising of citizens on sound health practices.

Such health education campaigns had a positive impact on lowering infection rates in the past period, she added.

Around 5,000 of the ministry’s health educators have provided awareness to 3.178 million citizens nationwide through 347,510 awareness campaigns.

The campaigns saw awareness training on the importance of adhering to preventive measures against the pandemic, including wearing facemasks, maintaining social distancing, washing hands regularly and disinfecting homes.

The ministry also launched the coronavirus hotline 105 to help citizens report infection cases.

The ministry also provided health awareness training to 821,334 citizens to curb the spread of the pandemic under the existing presidential initiative to detect and treat chronic diseases.

Around 105,312 education seminars have been organized through providing several health messages to citizens suffering from chronic diseases to raise awareness on the importance of regular follow-ups of their health status and adhering to a healthy lifestyle. 

Last December, the country had to reckon with a second wave of the pandemic with daily infection rates and deaths rising fast after stabilizing for months.

In response, the government tightned the enforcement of several measures to curb the second wave of the pandemic, including levying an immediate EGP 50 fine for not wearing masks in closed public places, public transportation, as well as underground metro and railway stations.

The authorities collected thousands of fines  for violators, helping to lower the rate of daily reported infections in the past period.

Officials recently announced that the worse of the second wave was behind us.

In lare January, Egypt began vaccination campaign against coronavirus using the Chinese Sinopharm vaccine late January by first inoculating hundreds of medical workers at quarantine hospitals.

The vaccine roll-out will see each person receiving two shots administered 21 days apart.

The health ministry recently concluded the vaccination of medical staff in 22 isolation hospitals nationwide, beginning vaccinating health staff in 86 chest and fever hospitals nationwide as a second phase of the immunisation program.

The country has recorded a total number 168,057 coronavirus and 9,512 deaths since the start of the pandemic in February 2020.