Egypt: Unvaccinated University Students Not Allowed to Attend Exams

Higher education institutions in Egypt have joined the list of universities worldwide asking students to get vaccinated against COVID-19 in order to be able to attend in-person classes and exams.

The Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research Khaled Abdel-Ghaffar said that all students would have to vaccinate if they want to attend exams at the end of the semester during this academic year, Erudera.com reports.

The news was given during the meeting of the Supreme Council of Universities held at the Helwan University headquarters, where the Minister of Education and Technical Education Tarek Shawky, as well as the members of the council, participated.

Minister Abdel-Ghaffar said that universities should be praised for their efforts to prevent students and other university members from entering the campus if they failed to show a COVID-19 test or proof of vaccination.  

In addition to universities in Egypt, according to University Vaccine Requirement Checker, an online tool developed by Erudera, universities located in different countries are also requiring students to be vaccinated against COVID-19.

Data show that thousands of universities in the United States require their students, employees, and staff to get COVID-19 vaccines, including some major universities. However, many students remain hesitant to get vaccinated.

In the United States, students from Michigan have held a protest recently at the Capitol to protest COVID-19 vaccine mandates at universities across Michigan.

Some universities have even decided to disenroll students who failed to comply with the vaccination requirement, including the University of New Mexico which announced it would disenroll more than 250 unvaccinated students, as well as the University of Virginia that has disenrolled 238 students ahead of the fall semester.

In addition to universities in Egypt and those in the United States, a considerable number of German universities have imposed COVID-19 vaccine mandates, including:

• University of Düsseldorf
• Leipzig University
• Karlshochschule International University
• University of Bremen
• University of Stuttgart
• Technical University of Applied Sciences Wildau
• University of Hohenheim
• Saarland University
• University of Erlangen-Nuremberg
• Technical University of Berlin

The University of Erlangen-Nürnberg said that it will be using 2G model (geimpft oder genesen), under which principle, it requires students to be either vaccinated or recovered to attend in-person events.

Universities across Belgium, Canada, Czechia, Denmark, France, and worldwide, also have COVID-19 vaccine mandates in force and are not allowing unvaccinated students to attend in-person studies unless they get a COVID-19 vaccine. Canada announced that it will recognize more COVID-19 vaccines, allowing international students and other exempt travelers who are fully vaccinated to enter the country from January 15, 2022.