Egypt's health ministry reported 686 new coronavirus cases on Sunday, bringing the total infection tally to 200,050 since the outbreak began in last year.

The health ministry also reported 37 new deaths, raising the total number of deaths from the virus to 11,882.

The statement said that 533 patients have been discharged during the last 24 hours after recovering from the virus, resulting in the total number of recoveries to reach 153,175.

Egypt started its vaccination campaign in January with Sinopharm and AstraZeneca vaccines. So far, it has received 650,000 Sinopharm doses from China and 50,000 AstraZeneca shots from the British-Indian vaccine.

Egypt is expected to receive millions of AstraZeneca doses by the end of March and during the coming two months.

Egypt’s Health Minister Hala Zayed discussed earlier on Sunday with the Chinese ambassador to Cairo speeding up the procedures to buy quantities of Sinopharm vaccine.

In a telephone call with Zayed, ambassador Liao Liqiang also expressed readiness of his country to send a new shipment of the Chinese vaccine in the upcoming days to Egypt as a gift, a statement by the health ministry said.

Moreover, the statement said, the ambassador stated that a delegation of Chinese experts would come to Egypt to examine the production lines of the country's only producer of vaccines & sera (VACSERA) after it has been praised by the World Health Organization for its readiness.

Last week, Zayed announced in a joint statement with Liqiang that Egypt was going to produce Sinovac coronavirus vaccine.