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Tuesday, 21 April 2020

Egypt’s talking heads zone in on Ramadan curfew hours, covid-19 clinical trials

The talking heads’ main focus last night was the fate of the nighttime curfew during Ramadan, which the Madbouly Cabinet should be announcing this week.

Are we getting a longer or shorter curfew? Al Kahera Alaan’s Lamees El Hadidi wondered out loud whether the government will decide to bring the curfew back to its original 7pm-6am schedule, or push the start of the curfew to as late as 10pm or even midnight to accommodate iftar. Maghrib is at 6:28pm CLT on the first day of Ramadan (watch, runtime: 2:23).

Anything you’ve heard so far about Ramadan curfew hours is nothing more than rumors, the prime minister’s media advisor Hany Younis told El Hekaya’s Amr Adib. Younis poured cold water on Adib’s suggestion that Cabinet has decided to start the daily curfew at 4pm, stressing that the decision will be made on Wednesday (watch, runtime: 4:24).

The talk show power couple also took note of US oil futures dropping to negative territory, which Lamees noted is not the best indicator for the global economy (watch, runtime: 3:23). Adib, meanwhile, had a chat with former Oil Minister Osama Kamal to explain the supply glut that led to the price drop (watch, runtime: 10:04). We have the story in What We’re Tracking Today, above.

Clinical trials for covid-19 treatment: Lamees called up Zewail City research director Ayman El Shibiny (watch, runtime: 6:56) and Eva Pharma CEO Riad Armanious (watch, runtime: 8:24) to discuss research and clinical trials currently underway on potential covid-19 treatments. El Shibiny focused largely on explaining the research being done on convalescent plasma therapy, but stressed that the trials remain inconclusive. Armanious, meanwhile, talked about research on other proposed treatments, such as malaria meds.

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