The Impact of Implementing the Egypt Pandemic Preparedness Plan for Acute Respiratory Infections in Combating the Early Stage of the COVID-19 Pandemic, February-July 2020: Viewpoint

This article briefly describes Egypt's acute respiratory infection (ARI) epidemic preparedness and containment plan and illustrates the impact of implementation of the plan on combating the early stage of the COVID-19 epidemic in Egypt. Pillars of the plan include crisis management, enhancing surveillance systems and contact tracing, case and hospital management, raising community awareness, and quarantine and entry points. To identify the impact of the implementation of the plan on epidemic mitigation, a literature review was performed of studies published from Egypt in the early stage of the pandemic. In addition, data for patients with COVID-19 from February to July 2020 were obtained from the National Egyptian Surveillance system and studied to describe the situation in the early stage of the epidemic in Egypt. The lessons learned indicated that the single most important key to success in early-stage epidemic containment is the commitment of all partners to a predeveloped and agreed-upon preparedness plan. This information could be useful for other countries in the region and worldwide in mitigating future anticipated ARI epidemics and pandemics. Postepidemic evaluation is needed to better assess Egypt's national response to the COVID-19 epidemic.