Fayza Ahmed Ibrahim, 63, is a mother of four and a widow. Queuing outside a food bank on 19 April, she said: ‘God only knows how many of us will die.’ Ibrahim is unemployed and lives in a densely-populated informal settlement in east Cairo. ‘What can we do when the virus comes for us?’ Her eyes are bloodshot from both crying and illness (she has diabetes-related retinal fibrosis)

Workers at the Egyptian Food Bank fill boxes with subsidised provisions for hundreds of thousands of struggling families across the capital on 19 April

Hajj Abdulmenem displays a robe made in his sewing workshop in Al-Tawheed Mosque, south Cairo, on 23 April. The now-closed workshop, part of Abdulmenem’s charity organisation, was exclusively staffed by mothers, widows, and divorcees

Women crowd the entrance to a charity in south Cairo on 26 April. In Egypt, 60% of the population was already either poor or vulnerable before the coronavirus pandemic

Commuters, many working in Egypt’s informal economy, cross the tracks at Cairo’s main railway station on 24 March. Over 60% of the country’s workforce is informally employed and vulnerable to having their livelihoods destroyed in the pandemic

An outdoor market largely frequented by working-class families and informal street vendors in central Cairo on 4 May

Workers disinfect the Giza pyramids complex on 25 March. The major attraction is currently closed because of the pandemic. Tourism is a vital industry that employs millions of Egyptians and accounts for 20% of the country’s GDP

Keepers at Cairo’s Giza Zoo during their seasonal round of animal vaccinations on 14 April. Some of them have been walking for many miles to reach the zoo after public transport was halted. ‘Who else is going to feed the animals?’ they said. ‘It’s God’s will for us to care for them’

A worker disinfects statues at the National Centre for Social and Criminological Research, west Cairo, on 22 March. ‘The scales of justice in this frame symbolise how the coronavirus pandemic is intensifying poverty and inequality,’ the photographer, Hamada Elrasam reflects, ‘creating an even more unjust world’

A bus station in central Cairo just before curfew on 20 April. Stations like this are usually packed with hundreds of people, but, on 25 March, Egypt imposed a nationwide curfew (now 9pm-6am for the month of Ramadan) to slow the spread of the virus

A mural by Egyptian artist Ammar Abo Bakr on Mohamed Mahmoud Street, central Cairo, on 25 March. Just over the tip of the child’s right wing, an inscription reads: ‘Glory to the unknowns’. ‘The poor and vulnerable were the ‘unknowns’ before corona,’ says Elrasam, ‘and they’ll be the “unknowns” long after it if we don’t begin to cure our world of poverty and inequality’