An Egyptian political prisoner who had Covid-19 while in custody has died, becoming the third detainee to die of the illness, a rights group said on Monday.

The real catastrophe in Egypt is not the Covid-19 pandemic reaching its peak, but the peaking of stupidity and disregard for citizens’ needs. The country is facing the coronavirus on less than 10 per cent of medicine and more than 90 per cent of security, militarism, quackery and sorcery.

The prison authorities in Egypt have released 168 inmates per a presidential pardon, while many others have been granted a conditional release, the Interior Ministry said.

Another Egyptian detainee has died from medical negligence, this time in Shibin Public Prison. According to the human rights organisation We Record Reda Abdullah, 70, died yesterday after his diabetes went untreated.

Egyptian lawyers have formally requested that the prosecutor general investigate the reported death of a prison official in Cairo’s Tora prison complex after contracting coronavirus, for fears that inmates might have been infected.

Mohammed Khater Ghamry has become the eighth person to die in an Egyptian detention centre this month after he was denied critical medical care for suspected coronavirus.

The death of a young Egyptian artist in prison has sent shockwaves across the country. With overcrowding, rampant abuse and no access to health care, Egypt’s facilities aren’t fit for any kind of prisoner, NGOs say.

UNESCO launched a global campaign this year called “Journalism without fear or favor” to celebrate journalists on World Press Freedom Day on May 3. But in Egypt, the celebration had a different taste with more restrictions inflicted on journalists.

An independent human rights organisation based in Geneva said on Monday that two persons who were suspected of having been infected by the coronavirus have died in detention in Egypt, bringing the number of deaths in detention in the country since June 2013 to 1,007.

Egyptian political prisoner Alaa Abdel Fattah has decided to call off a hunger strike he started last month in protest against restrictions imposed on prisoners since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic.