By Mayar Ibrahim
Date Posted: July 12, 2025.
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Biohazard waste and blood samples scattered on the floor. A breakout was a palpable risk everyone was willing to take. Precautions, rarely taken; masks, mere accessories; this was Zeina’s first encounter with COVID-19.
Fig. 1: COVID samples and biohazard waste in the Ministry of Health, Egypt, 2020.
She was a field application specialist at QIAGEN’s branch in Egypt, a German biotechnology company that provides tools for medical testing and research in over 25 countries. Zeina’s job involved training, technical support, and collaborating closely with researchers, clinicians, and laboratory staff to integrate new technologies. During the first year of the pandemic, however, her focus shifted to troubleshooting, delivering kits, and, eventually, swabbing people. But on that day, March 23, 2020, she had only one task: testing COVID-19 samples in the Ministry of Health. With no prior training and very limited instructions, she worked nonstop in a laminar flow, a cabin designed with an airflow suction system to prevent contamination. Right when she was in the thick of it, she realized the air was not being sucked at all, and one of the samples splattered on her left hand. Even though no one was wearing any protective gear, Zeina managed to muster her courage and ask for a mask, goggles, scrubs, and gloves.
QIAGEN had been involved in the pandemic since the very beginning, specifically when the Minister of Health, Dr. Hala Zayed, went to Wuhan in March 2020 to show solidarity with the Chinese government in fighting COVID. When she came back, the Ministry contacted QIAGEN, asking for someone to take her sample. “There was no system—just sheer panic. We were expected to step in with no training at all, and we did it…I wasn’t trained in Germany like others assumed. I actually taught myself, tailored my knowledge to my clients, and shared my contact information with them so they could reach me anytime. Honestly, my job was 24/7.”
Zeina finished her shift at 7:00 pm, and the curfew was at 8:00 pm. Usually, she would book a minivan on SWVL, an application that offers shared van rides to the nearest station to your destination, but this was no longer feasible. It was almost 7:30 pm, and public transportation was not an option. Before the pandemic, she would take the metro or a microbus and then get reimbursed by the company. She would look forward to stepping outside QIAGEN’s basement, where her office was located, “to help others and do something meaningful.” Today, she tested samples for a disease she knew almost nothing about in a turbulent, negligent environment. She was exhausted and tight on money but had no choice but to order an UBER—even though it was quite early for the bustling city of Cairo. After all, the curfew was at 8:00 pm and living in the suburbs while the ministry of health is located downtown did not exactly help. Many requests were canceled when the drivers knew her destination, except one who happened to live nearby. It was a 40:00-minute ride, and it was almost 8:00 pm.
Egypt confirmed its first case of COVID-19 on Valentine’s Day, 2020. Since then, different measures were actively endorsed to contain the pandemic: schools and universities closed their doors, social distancing became the norm, a nationwide curfew was enforced, and many public hospitals were repurposed to isolation wards. As of July 2025, there are 24,830 recorded deaths in Egypt. Yet, many human rights organizations accuse the Egyptian government of underreporting the real numbers.
Still, behind these figures lies a strained health system marked by serious disparities in the distribution of healthcare workers and poor quality of care, particularly in the public health sector. The low pay that the public sector offers, as well as the lack of professional growth, prompted many health workers to leave the country. Yet, during the outbreak, public hospitals were at the forefront, dealing with and taking on most cases. Health workers, on the other hand, were maxed out, operating almost non-stop in a contagious environment where a bigger challenge remained: how to keep themselves protected and motivated as they continue to work on the front lines of a global health emergency.
Fig. 2: The Minister of Health and Population, Dr. Hala Zayed, attending a wedding (right), compared to scenes of hospitals and medical staff struggling in Egypt. Photo by Middle East Eye.
Problem Solved
To encounter the vicissitudes of daily life, it is better to be prepared. But when COVID hit, there was nothing to read, no manual or agreed-upon protocols to follow. Field specialists like Zeina were tasked to give technical presentations and troubleshooting services in public hospitals and labs across the country, often following some vague instructions sent via email by multinational companies supplying the kits. The instructions, the protocols, and even the kits changed almost every month as “the whole world was on trial and error. I was just clueless like them [health workers]. I would receive an email couple of days before and then provide them with some technical presentation as if I knew everything related to COVID!”
Zeina went to the company thinking it would be a normal working day. Her line manager had different plans. She was sent to “a ghost town,” a public hospital meant for infectious diseases that was converted into ICUs for COVID patients. For a couple of days, the hospital’s lab was filled with chlorine and Zeina’s troubleshooting attempts. She changed the samples multiple times, hoping for different results, but nothing seemed to work. One last pour of chlorine dripped on her New Balance shoes and jeans, washing off their colors and Zeina’s too. Yet still, she steadily performed like the professional she was expected to be, the QIAGEN expert. “Let’s try with water, not samples this time.” The water tested positive. It turns out that the chemicals inside the instrument were contaminated. Problem solved. Yet, right in this moment, the throes of working on her own embroiled her in some sort of visceral refusal. The smell of chlorine, the sight of washed off shoes, the thought of hugging and kissing her now sick colleague on her cheeks urged her to call her line manager and demand to get tested. From this point on, Zeina set aside one outfit for work and sealed her phone with plastic wrap for protection.
Fig 3: Zeina in one of the hospitals (left), the hallway in the ministry of health where she spent most of her time (middle), the gear she demanded to work with COVID samples (right).
Swabbing in Crisis
No time to process. It is urgent. It is necessary. It is painful but inevitable. It was performative and dissonant, and, if done wrong, pointless. Yet, nobody could do this but her. The only issue is that she didn’t know how. Zeina didn’t have any money to call in a real professional to swab her demented grandmother and her family. “Why are you doing this to me? Why are you hurting me?” Zeina’s grandmother pleaded repeatedly as she tried to pin her down while apologizing.
At the time, getting tested by a professional cost around 1500 EGP—approximately $ 95—and QIAGEN did not provide coverage for that service. Although the kits were abundant in the company, the CEO prohibited the workers from using them for personal needs. Officially, each kit is designated for 50 samples, but in practice, it can be used to test up to 60. Since the company was already conducting tests in-house, they recorded 50 samples per kit and labeled the remaining 10 tests as internal, to be conducted as discreetly as possible.
Zeina had to swab her family using the company’s internal kits. “Nobody could do this but me, and so I had to. I was practicing on them. I was hurting them, but it had to be done. I had to handle this. There was no other option. I did not have the luxury of thinking, yet I kept asking myself, what if she was positive? How will I afford an ambulance? I do not have a man that would help me out… And where the hell is Mahmoud?!” He was Zeina’s ex-boyfriend, barely by her side the whole time—consumed by his own reality of facing military conscription during the pandemic. Yet, her anger and frustration found their way into him. “I was worried about them, afraid I might do something wrong, and was really trying to pull myself together, so I kept convincing myself that this is just a simple task at hand. We left each other shortly after.”
Fig. 4: Equipment for RNA extraction in the basement of the company (left), the stairs leading to the basement where the work on samples is performed (middle), the PCR setup (right).
“As Tough as a Hundred Men”
In June 2025, Zeina made her way back to QIAGEN. She now resides in Köln, Germany, pursuing a PhD in biotechnology. Upon entering the company, Dr. Gamal, her first line manager, who is now in his mid-50s, welcomed her with open arms. He took her by the hand to meet and greet everybody, grabbed her a chair, and made her some tea. The entire time she was there, he kept praising her capabilities, saying that her story is one of struggle and acknowledging her noticeable capacity to handle COVID. But this visible sense of appreciation was not always there. When she first started working for QIAGEN, Zeina remembered how hard it was to convince Dr. Gamal to work in the field, to get out there and do something. “We do not have women who work outside,” he would say. This continued for six months till her line manager changed. Right before leaving Egypt, Zeina recalls Dr. Gamal’s words to her colleagues: ” Every time she’d do go to the field, I’d think, ‘ahhhh she will come back crying this time; she will lose it eventually,’ but she never did! Kanet ba meet ragal — she was as tough as a hundred men.”
Working with the Ministry on COVID was not mandatory. It was a choice that all women consciously chose not to make. They preferred giving presentations in universities and research institutions instead of going to unsanitary, male-dominated public hospitals. “At the time, I was the only woman doing fieldwork. I’d go to public hospitals wearing modest clothes and no makeup to avoid harassment. At research centers and universities, I dressed differently and spoke more formally. Each space demanded a different persona.” Driven by a strong sense of belonging to the company, an urge to prove herself, and sense of responsibility towards patients, Zeina ended up with the company’s three biggest accounts: the Army’s Medical Labs, the Ministry of Health labs, and the forensic departments.
Fig 5: QIAGEN field specialists.
To customers and those working in the ministry, Zeina was QIAGEN, the expert, the problem solver, the professional who received her training in Germany. To her second line manager, she was Zozo, “his go- to ‘man,'” one of the few he could blindly depend on. To her family, she was the COVID doctor, the know it all. “I was just like them. I would read, perform, and hope for the best. I was overworked, underpaid, and emotionally exhausted. They looked at me as if I knew everything—but I was just trying to survive.”
Fig 6: Zeina and her colleagues in QIAGEN Egypt, June 2025.
References
Egypt Announces Prices at Its First Drive-Through COVID-19 Testing Center.” Ahram Online, March 12, 2021. https://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/64/372252/Egypt/Politics-/Egypt-announces-prices-at-its-first-drivethrough-c.aspx.
Middle East Eye. “Egypt Health Minister Faces Uproar after Attending Crowded Wedding amid COVID-19.” January 6, 2021. https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/egypt-covid-health-minister-wedding-uproar.
Peeri, Noah C., Niloufar Shrestha, Maimuna S. Rahman, et al. “The SARS, MERS and Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) Epidemics, the Newest and Biggest Global Health Threats: What Lessons Have We Learned?” The Lancet Infectious Diseases 20, no. 8 (August 2020): 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1473-3099(20)30233-4.
QIAGEN. “Our Global Presence.” QIAGEN. Accessed July 4, 2025. https://www.qiagen.com/us/about-us/our-global-presence.
World Bank. Project Information Document: Egypt COVID-19 Emergency Response (P173912). Washington, DC: World Bank, 2020. https://documents.worldbank.org/en/publication/documents-reports/documentdetail/906831588109454283/project-information-document-egypt-covid-19-emergency-response-p173912.