Overwhelmed medic sat in Egypt ICU as doctors help Covid-19 patients

Overwhelmed medic sits slumped in the corner of an Egyptian intensive care ward with her hands on her knees as doctors frantically battle to save Covid-19 patients ‘after the oxygen ran out’

• Harrowing footage shows doctors frantically trying to save Covid-19 patients
• It is claimed the oxygen failed at the government-run hospital in Egypt
• Four patients died at the hospital but health ministry denies claims the deaths were caused by a lack of oxygen 

This harrowing footage shows doctors frantically trying to save Covid-19 patients in the intensive care ward of an Egyptian hospital after the oxygen allegedly failed. 

One doctor is so overwhelmed she can be seen slumped in the corner of the room whilst clasping her knees as a flurry of activity surrounds her. 

Panicked medics can be seen making a desperate attempt to save a patient by manually pumping oxygen into their lungs.  

The video shows a number of motionless patients in their hospital beds at the al-Husseineya Central Hospital in the country’s Shargia Governorate. 

This harrowing footage shows doctors frantically trying to save Covid-19 patients in the intensive care ward of an Egyptian hospital after the oxygen allegedly failed. One doctor is so overwhelmed she can be seen slumped in the corner of the room whilst clasping her knees as a flurry of activity surrounds her

Despite their best efforts, medics were unable to save four people who died as a result of coronavirus.   

A relative of one of the patients filmed the footage and can be heard saying: ‘All those in the intensive care are dead… there is no oxygen’.  

There was no official comment from the hospital on the situation, but it is claimed the oxygen supplies had run out.

The Egyptian undersecretary for health in Sharqia, Hisham Masoud, issued a statement after the footage was widely shared saying that his department were investigating the incident.

He said that the team had been sent to the hospital and had confirmed that four people died and that one of those people had been on a ventilator.

However, Mr Masoud denied allegations by the relative who filmed the video that the deaths were caused by a lack of oxygen. 

There was no official comment from the hospital on the situation, but it is claimed the oxygen supplies had run out

He instead said the patients died because they suffered chronic diseases in addition to the virus. The relative offered no immediate evidence to back up their claim that the hospital ran out of oxygen.  

The Sharqia prosecutor’s office said they were investigating the deaths. 

The hospital director and doctors were being questioned, according to an official at the public prosecutor’s office in Cairo who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the media.

The four dead were two women in their 60s and two men, 76 and 44 years old, according to a local news outlet. There are currently 36 virus patients being treated at the hospital’s isolation ward, the governor said. 

The deaths follow similar allegations by a relative last week that two patients died because of a lack of oxygen at a government-run hospital elsewhere in the Nile Delta. 

Mr Masoud denied allegations by the relative who filmed the video that the deaths were caused by a lack of oxygen

Prosecutors in Menoufiya province have launched an investigation into the cause of the deaths Friday. 

Egypt, the Arab world’s most populous country with more than 100 million people, is facing a surge in confirmed virus cases and renewed calls for the government to impose a lockdown to contain a second wave of the pandemic. 

The country has seen a spike in daily reported COVID-19 cases in recent weeks. The Health Ministry announced over 1,400 new cases and 54 deaths on Saturday, one of the highest official daily tallies since the start of the pandemic last year.

Overall, Egypt has reported 140,878 confirmed cases, including 7,741 deaths. However, the actual number of COVID-19 cases in Egypt are thought to be far higher, in part due to limited testing and uncounted patients who are being treated at home or in private hospitals.

Egypt’s top health authority announced that a Chinese vaccine made by Sinopharm has been approved for emergency use, and inoculations would begin within two weeks.

In televised comments Saturday, Health Minister Hala Zayed said negotiations were also underway to procure two other vaccines – one from Oxford University and AstraZeneca, as well as one from Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech.

Finance Minister Mohamed Maait said last month that the government has contracted to purchase 20 million doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine and 30 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, according to the state-run Al-Ahram daily.  

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