More than 20k Egyptians have now died as a result of covid-19, according to the Health Ministry’s daily update released early this morning. Another 61 people lost their lives due to complications arising from the virus, pushing the country’s overall death toll to 20,052.

Egypt has one of the highest covid mortality rates in the world, with 5.7% of reported cases resulting in death, though an accurate figure remains elusive — Health Ministry officials have previously acknowledged that the daily case figures it reports under-estimate the total number of cases as they include only test results from state-run labs. There have now been 352,123 confirmed cases of covid after the ministry reported another 856 new cases yesterday, down from 870 the day before.

Poor countries to receive zero-royalty covid-19 antibody test: Low- and middle-income countries will receive a global license for a serological technology that detects covid-19 antibodies, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced on Tuesday, under an agreement to boost production. The Spanish National Research Council, a public research institute, is offering the technology as part of a non-exclusive licensing agreement as a global public good.

Europe could be looking at an additional 700k covid deaths by March, pushing the total deaths to over 2.2 mn, the WHO said yesterday. A surge in cases on the continent in recent days has seen a number of European countries reimpose lockdown restrictions and institute tougher measures to force people to take the vaccine.