The spokesman of the Egyptian Ministry of Health said resuming in-class education, which has been on hiatus for both schools and universities nationwide since December, is part of living with the virus and restoring normalcy to lives.



"There is nothing to prevent students from returning to schools. It is part of living with the virus and returning to normal life, this is the policy Egypt has followed since the onset of the pandemic," Spokesman Khaled Megahed told the media on Thursday.



He stressed the need to comply to all preventative measures whether by the schools’ staff or students along with parents.



"The ministry has adopted a plan, in cooperation with the Ministry of Education, to ensure that the precautionary measures are followed inside schools," he added.



Egypt cancelled in-class education and postponed first-term exams at schools and universities in December 2020, nearly a week after the country entered a second wave of the coronavirus pandemic.



Egyptian students are due to take their first term exam by the end of the mid-year holiday, which will come to end on 20 February, a step which is of concern to many students and parents in Egypt due to the daily tallies of coronavirus infections and the death toll.



Many students turned to social media platforms asking the education minister to postpone the exam as well as the second academic term, particularly after the brief rise Egypt witnessed over the past two days which was unlike the infection and death tolls registered over the preceding days.



Twitter hashtags"#Cancel_the_exams", "#The_exams_are_dangerous_MrPresident" and "#Our_health_is_important" in Arabic have been trending in the past three weeks featuring schools and universities asking the government and President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi to cancel the first-term exams.



Egypt entered the second wave of COVID-19 in early December, however, in January, the country witnessed a decline in the daily infection rate.



Egypt’s Minister of Health Hala Zayed said on Thursday at a meeting with the World Health Organization (WHO) that the number of coronavirus infections in Egypt is expected to increase by April.



Egypt has so far registered 171,290 cases of coronavirus, including 133,331 recoveries and 9,804 fatalities, since the outbreak of the pandemic in February 2020.

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