The Egypt Independent had the following about the March 1st case:
According to the head of the Preventive Medicine Sector Alaa Eid, the foreigner had been working under an Egyptian company and arrived in Egypt since February.
. . . The company w[h]ere the patient worked at was ordered not to allow anyone to leave or enter their headquarters, and to provide detailed information regarding employees or visitors within the last ten days. The 1,500 quarantined cases have had samples taken for testing, Eid said.
Of course, the floodgates might be opening up in terms of Egyptians coming down with the virus as there were announcements of an Egyptian who was overseas along with 12 crew members of a cruise ship.
Some found it hard to believe that there were no Egyptian cases considering that there are cases in Canada, France, Greece, Taiwan and the United States that appear to be linked to travel in Egypt. Let's look at some of the reports prior to the recent news of Egyptians coming down with the virus.
Yahoo Finance reports:
It is mind-boggling because no Egyptians are reported to have contracted the new coronavirus whereas French and Canadian authorities reported 7 confirmed cases of COVID-19 from travelers coming from Egypt.
. . . We believe that Egypt doesn't want to scare travelers from visiting the country and hiding information from the public and WHO regarding total number of infections in the country. I don't have any physical evidence of this, I am just using math to infer this.
Ahram has this to say:
The WHO said the confirmed cases in Canada and France who were on a tourist visit to Egypt were discovered in their countries and none of them showed any symptoms while passing through the Egyptian entry points, therefore they could not have been detected by an entry examination.
This article mentions 2 French and 1 Canadian so a little difference from the 7 mentioned in Yahoo Finance.
Enterprise Press mentions four individuals. They also mention 2 from France and 1 from Canada. They add the fourth was from Taiwan.
So the above three links are using different numbers, but all are discussing French and Canadians.
Click 2 Houston reports about the Egypt/US connection:
All five patients returned from a trip to Egypt in late February where officials say they contracted the virus. They didn’t show symptoms immediately and so they went about their business as usual for a few days, officials said.
One worked at Rice University and 17 members of their community are in self-quarantine.
With all those cases popping up around the world (similar to how cases were popping up from China, Iran and Italy), there would be growing pressure on Egypt to look into the situation.
Egypt Today has this to say about Egyptians:
Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly declared on Saturday that workers in the hotel where two French tourists diagnosed with Coronavirus were staying will be tested.
Middle East Monitor came up with this thought:
Sources have told the London-based publication Egypt Watch that they estimate there to be more than 20 confirmed cases of coronavirus in Egypt, contrary to official figures which put the number at two. Patients who have tested positive for the virus are being kept in military hospitals which are not subject to direct supervision by the Egyptian Ministry of Health, the report claims. This means that the statistics will not be recorded and the World Health Organisation will not necessarily be informed of confirmed cases.
So in order to avoid notifying WHO, was Egypt sending their cases to military hospitals? Other Middle Eastern countries didn't appear to have much faith about Egypt's figures.
Al Jazeera writes:
Authorities in Qatar have temporarily banned all arrivals from Egypt, except Qatari citizens, over fears of the spread of deadly coronavirus.
Middle East Monitor notes:
Kuwait’s interior ministry has suspended the issuance of entry visas for Egyptian nationals amid fears of the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak; Al-Qabas newspaper quoted a local security source as saying yesterday.
Did these countries have some inside knowledge about military hospitals in Egypt?
Maybe the pressure to be honest got to Egypt.
Egypt Independent wrote on March 5th:
The Egyptian Ministry of Health and the World Health Organization announced on Thursday the third coronavirus case in Egypt – an Egyptian national returning from travels abroad.
The 44-year-old Egyptian citizen was traveling back from Serbia through France, where he spent a 12 hour layover, Health Ministry Spokesperson Khaled Megahed said.
So the first announced case of an Egyptian was not a community spread, but tied directly to a foreign trip.
Then the big news hit. Via the New York Times:
Twelve crew members aboard a cruise ship on the Nile were placed in isolation on Friday after testing positive for the coronavirus, Egypt’s health ministry said.
. . . Until Friday, Egypt, which relies heavily on tourism and has a weak health care system, said it had discovered just three coronavirus cases in the country, and only one was an Egyptian. But in the past week, at least 26 tourists have tested positive for the virus after returning from vacation in Egypt, including 11 Greeks, seven Americans and six French.
Egypt had a motivation to keep any news of infections among Egyptians hidden from site. Perhaps the fact that many of the tourists on this cruise ship might also be infected would be too big to hide and Egyptian authorities had to come clean. It is highly possible that tourism to Egypt will dry up. That will cause a big economic impact. And, if Egypt did try and hide the spread of the virus, will it now explode like it has in Iran and Italy? And will their "weak health care system" just get over-run?
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