Unvaccinated employees in the education industry should register to be vaccinated through the Health Ministry’s website before 31 August as part of the government’s bid to vaccinate educators and students before the start of the new academic year, Health Minister Hala Zayed said yesterday, according to a cabinet statement. President Abdelfattah El Sisi had earlier this week directed officials to come up with a plan to administer vaccines to all teachers and students before the upcoming academic year.

State employees in the education sector will be asked to register through a special page that will be created on the website, after which they should receive a message offering them an appointment within 72 hours, the minister said. The government is also planning on dedicating several of the 580 vaccination centers nationwide to the push to vaccinate educators, under an agreement between the Health and Higher Education Ministries, Zayed said.

Remember: Staying unjabbed may soon restrict your access to campus, with Cabinet spokesperson Nader Saad saying on Monday that covid-19 vaccination at school communities could become mandatory at some point in the near future. AUC has already announced that only vaccinated students and staff will be allowed to return to campus this fall.

Next up on the vaccine priority list: Public sector and industrial workers, particularly those working in the extractive industries, for major companies, and at industrial zones, Zayed said.

Egypt received a 299.7k dose shipment of the Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine Monday, gifted to us by the UK, and delivered through the Gavi / Covax program, according to a statement by the UK embassy in Egypt yesterday. The shipment is part of the first batch of the 100 mn doses the UK has pledged to share with countries around the world within the next year. We received 1.76 mn shots of AstraZeneca through Covax last Friday.

The Health Ministry reported 112 new covid-19 infections yesterday, up from 107 the day before. Egypt has now disclosed a total of 285,577 confirmed cases of covid-19. The ministry also reported 5 new deaths, bringing the country’s total death toll to 16,630.

MEANWHILE- CureVac says its second-generation mRNA jab created with GlaxoSmithKline outperformed its first vaccine candidate in pre-clinical trials: An animal-based study has shown that the new vaccine has a higher neutralizing capacity against a range of variants — including the super-contagious delta — compared with CureVac’s initial vaccine, which had in June showed efficacy of just 47%. GSK and CureVac plan to begin a phase 1 trials of the new vaccine in 4Q2021.

OTHER GLOBAL COVID NEWS you need to know:

• Texas Governor Greg Abbott has tested positive for covid. He’s vaccinated and asymptomatic, but has been a leader of Republican opposition to mask mandates and the like. (CNN)
• Grappling with delta: Chicago is back to requiring masks indoors, while Los Angeles will require them at large outdoor gatherings. And as we noted yesterday, New Zealand is in a three-day lockdown after the discovery of just one new case, its first since February.