- A video showing Egyptian nurses struggling to keep COVID-19 patients alive was widely shared on social media.
- The video, filmed by a patient’s relative, claims that at least four people died because a hospital ran out of oxygen.
- The deaths in the ICU are under investigation, but a local governor denied that they were caused by a lack of oxygen.
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Egypt launched an investigation into the deaths of at least four COVID-19 patients after a video showing nurses struggling to keep ICU patients alive was widely shared online, the Associated Press reported.
The video, which has been covered by several vehicles, including Middle East Eye and Al Jazeera, shows nurses struggling and screaming as they run around a hospital.
In it, Ahmed Mamdouh, who filmed the video, can be heard saying: “everyone in the ICU died … there is no oxygen,” reported Middle East Eye.
The governor of Sharqia province has denied that is the case, according to the AP.
Governor Mamdouh Ghorab said the patients – two women in their 60s and two men, 76 and 44 – died because they had chronic illnesses in addition to the virus, the AP reported.
Mamdouh did not include evidence supporting the oxygen claim, and the Middle East Eye reported on Monday that the police had summoned him for questioning.
Sharqia’s prosecutor’s office told the AP that it was investigating the deaths in the hospital. An anonymous official told the agency that the hospital’s director and doctors were being questioned.
The allegations follow similar claims made by another family in Menoufiya province last week.
There, a relative of a COVID-19 patient said that two people died due to a lack of oxygen in a government-run hospital, according to the AP.
These deaths are also under investigation, the AP reported.
Egypt is experiencing one of the biggest peaks in COVID-19 since the pandemic began last year.
The Ministry of Health announced another 1,400 new cases and 54 deaths on Saturday, the AP reported. More than 144,000 cases of COVID-19 have been reported in Egypt and at least 7,918 people have died from the disease, according to Johns Hopkins University.