"Stay at home, stay safe": the Great Pyramid of Giza served as a projection screen this Monday evening for a message in letters of light dedicated to the fight against the new coronavirus. Projected in large green letters on a red background and written in English, the message was accompanied by a second, in blue letters: "Thank you to those who watch over our safety", intended for the personnel mobilized.
Egypt: the great pyramid of Giza at the service of the campaign against the coronavirus epidemic.
"Stay at home, stay safe" can be read tonight on the pyramid of King Cheops. pic.twitter.com/yBxgtU6Gsw
Egypt officially registered 656 cases of coronavirus and 41 deaths. In front of a small crowd of journalists summoned for the occasion, the Minister of Tourism and Antiquities Khaled el-Enany called the initiative a "message to the whole world".
Multi-billion dollar loss
At the same time, Khaled el-Enany assured that his ministry was working "very hard in the sanitation and disinfection of all tourist hotels, boats, monuments, museums, in order to be ready to welcome" tourists after the end of the pandemic. Tourism, the heavyweight of the Egyptian economy, has long been moribund after the years of political instability following the revolt of 2011.
For this sector, which has seen a gradual return of foreign visitors to the banks of the Nile and the Red Sea since 2017, the Covid-19 pandemic marks a new blow. "We have lost billions of dollars but our priority was very clear: the health of Egyptians and tourists," the minister said on Monday evening without giving details of the losses linked to the outbreak of the pandemic in the country.
Faced with the pandemic, the Egyptian authorities have in particular decreed the stopping of international flights, the closure of museums and archaeological sites until April 15. In addition to hospital staff, Egypt has mobilized army units in the fight against the new coronavirus, in particular for disinfection tasks.
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