The impact of implementing Egypt Pandemic preparedness plan for acute respiratory infections in combating the early stage of COVID-19 Pandemic, February-July 2020.

UNSTRUCTURED: This article briefly describes Egypt acute respiratory infections (ARIs) epidemic preparedness and containment plan and illustrates the impact of plan implementation in combating the early stage of COVID-19 epidemic in Egypt. Plan pillars include: crisis management, enhancing surveillance systems and contact tracing, case and hospital management, raise community awareness and quarantine and entry points. To identify the impact of plan implementation on epidemic mitigation, literature review was performed for the studies published from Egypt in the early stage of pandemic. In addition, data of COVID-19 patients February-July 2020 was obtained from the National Egyptian Surveillance system and studied to describe the epidemic situation in the early stage of the epidemic in Egypt. Lessons learned indicated that the single most important key to success in epidemic early-stage containment is the commitment of all partners to pre-developed and agreed upon preparedness plan. This information could be useful for other countries in region and worldwide in mitigating future anticipated ARIs epidemics and pandemics. Post-epidemic evaluation is needed to better assess Egypt national response against COVID019 epidemic.