CAIRO: Egypt reopened 31 more hotels for tourists last week amid anti-COVID-19 measures, raising the number of hotels reopened nationwide to 572, an Egyptian tourism ministry official said in a statement on Saturday.
The hotels have been reopened with a limited capacity after receiving an official hygiene safety certificate issued by a joint inspection commission from the ministries of tourism and health, said Abdel-Fattah al-Aasy, assistant minister of tourism and antiquities for monitoring hotel facilities.
Egypt started reopening hotels in mid-May, but they were limited to local tourism initially due to the international flight suspension.
The North African country started to resume international flights on July 1 amid a “coexistence plan” to maintain anti-coronavirus precautionary measures while resuming economic activities.
The government has recently lifted a partial nighttime curfew it has been imposing since late March, and reopened restaurants, cafes, theaters and cinemas, as well as hotels, museums and archeological sites for tourists, all with limited capacity.
Tourism is one of the main sources of national income and foreign currency in Egypt. The country’s tourism revenues hit a record high of 13 billion U.S. dollars in 2019.
Until Friday night, Egypt has registered a total of 86,474 COVID-19 cases, including 4,188 deaths and 27,302 recoveries.
