As lockdown clears the air, Cairo looks to keep pollution low

(Reuters, 25 May 2020) Expanded public transit, cleaner fuels and more shared bicycles could help preserve coronavirus-era gains, officials say.

It is a Thursday evening in downtown Cairo, usually a crowded and noisy time as the weekend gets underway. But today the streets are quiet, and the air is noticeably clean.

"It has been a long time since I breathed such fresh air here and saw the sky clean like that," observed Fathi Ibrahim, a 52-year-old resident of downtown Cairo.

Thick pollution - from vehicles, factories and power plants - usually makes breathing a suffocating effort in the heart of the city, he said. But a lockdown to slow the coronavirus pandemic has helped cleared the smog.

"We even started to listen to the sounds of birds early in the morning and the weather is also getting much better," Ibrahim told Thomson Reuters Foundation.

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Reuters, 25 May 2020: As lockdown clears the air, Cairo looks to keep pollution low