![]() This is to say that the virus came to reveal their poor conditions and absence of basic means of protection. Actually, both systems of social and health security cover only workers in the formal sector, totally ignoring those falling outside this classification not only in times of crises but generally speaking even before the current pandemic. Therefore, Coronavirus crisis unveiled the degrading living conditions of the entire informal sector beginning from poverty, unemployment, reliance on charity and culminating with the exorbitant price of accessing health services combined with lack of legal protection. In the same context, the crisis revealed the status of workers in the informal sector estimated according to the Central Agency of Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS) to around 5.6 million with 277,000 workers on a daily basis, 233,000 seasonal workers in governmental institutions, in addition to 609,000 seasonal workers in other settings, and 3.7 million working on irregular base in the private sector all these categories were confronted with enormous challenges due to the closure of leisure and touristic facilities besides street vendors affected by the closing of open-air markets, in addition to the eternal problem of domestic workers that took a new dimension with the pandemic as the majority of Egyptian households got rid of them by fear of being contaminated this happened without any material retribution and reconfirms the fragility of their legal and social status. Providing adequate protective and preventive measures to medical teams should have represented a national strategic goal in delivering close protection hospitals are actually a notorious center for the reproduction of the virus, exposing thus medical staff to increased risk of contamination on the other hand, the society is in dire need for the humanitarian services provided by this staff however, the poor conditions of medical facilities, limited allocations to the health sector, and inappropriate means of protection (such as the provision of sufficient masks and adequate sterilization of hospitals) resulted in number of infections and deaths among physicians, nursing, first aid rescuers and technical support staff. The crisis had also a drastic effect in the sector of medical services considered by the State as the first line of defense against the virus and the main cornerstone in the global fight to overcome this fatal pandemic. Therefore, workers lacked the basic requirements of health and legal protection as illustrated by the numbers of those contaminated and deaths in their ranks. ![]() Actually, the main reason behind this degradation was due to the coercive measures and decisions adopted by business employers: termination and collective firing of workers in some institutions it also included abstention from disbursing salaries or reduction of salaries while forcing workers to provide the same hours of work as before the pandemic in many cases employers refrained from implementing the preventive measures prescribed by WHO and confirmed by the Egyptian government according to the international labor standards and to the Egyptian Labor Law 12/2003 stating the rules of professional security in general and those to be specifically applied in epidemic circumstances. In order to face the current crisis, the Egyptian government issued a set of measures at the economic and health levels which affected the society as a whole, especially workers and more specifically workers in the private sector and non-organized sectors this led to the deterioration of their own living conditions and that of their families with the huge loss of jobs. ![]() Undoubtedly, the present crisis will affect everybody despite the variety of its intensity among countries according to their economic and political status. This one of the results from the set of adopted preventive measures to counteract the virus such as isolation, quarantine, social distancing, prevention from travelling, total closure of all State institutions including schools, universities, companies and factories, leisure commodities and touristic firms these measures had a negative effect on all economies over the world and the global system entered in a stage of stagnation influencing in turn the social and economic status of people, including in Egypt. Under the circumstances witnessed worldwide since the spread of Coronavirus in every country, the pandemic social and economic damages will obviously have an important impact at both national and global levels. Socio-Economic Consequences of Pandemic COVID-19
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