Egypt authorities to investigate four COVID-19 deaths

Egyptian government lawyers began investigating the deaths of at least four coronavirus patients in a public hospital in Egypt on Sunday, as a video of nurses struggling to keep patients alive was widely shared on social media.The governor of Sharqia province denied allegations by a patient's relative that the death was caused by a lack of oxygen in the government-run intensive care unit, which treated COVID-19 patients.Governor Mamdoh Ghorb said that the patients died because they had to face chronic diseases besides viruses. Relatives, who also filmed the video, provided no direct evidence to support their claim that the hospital ran out of oxygen.Egypt, the Arab world's most populous country with more than 100 million people, is experiencing an increase in confirmed virus cases and calls for the government to stop the second wave of the pandemic.The Sharqiya prosecutor's office said they were investigating the deaths.According to an official from the public prosecutor's office in Cairo, the hospital's director and doctors were being questioned who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the media.According to local news outlets, four of the dead were two women aged 60 and two men aged 76 and 44. The governor said that there are currently 36 virus patients in the isolation ward of the hospital.Egypt's Health Minister Hala Zayed said later on Sunday that "all hospitals receiving coronavirus patients had adequate medical oxygen supplies."Increase in casesThe death allegations were followed last week by a relative that two patients died due to lack of oxygen in a government-run hospital elsewhere in the Nile Delta.Prosecutors in the province of Menofia began an investigation into the causes of the deaths on Friday.Egypt's top health authority has announced that a Chinese vaccine made by Sinopharm has been approved for emergency use, and vaccination will begin for two weeks.