Given the complexity of COVID 19 and its unprecedented spread and impact, many social studies educators are attempting to address it in newly developed curricula. Yet, designing curricula around COVID 19 raises questions around understanding its broader historical and socioeconomic context and impact, as well as linking it to students’ democratic participation abilities. Thus, historical agency is the catalyst between both notions of historical understanding and democratic citizenship. It attempts to enhance students’ sense of ownership over their societies through a) developing the awareness that agency is a lens of making sense of history and b) by providing opportunities to explicitly connect historical agency to the choices that people face today (Barton, 2012). This study examines how Egyptian teachers in alternative education networks are fostering and addressing historical agency in their newly developed curricula on COVID 19. This paper aims to conduct a content analysis of the “essential questions” used by educators to guide their lesson planning. Essential questions have proven to “direct student learning” as well as “commit students to the processes of creative and critical thinking through inquiry” (Wilhelm, 2014). The paper also explores two main questions around historical agency: a) Is Interaction with COVID addressed in individual acts of resilience or in collective actions and group struggle? b) Are students portrayed in the lesson plans as makers or as receivers of history? The findings should help shed light on biases educators in Egypt have in their perceptions of the virus as a socio-historical phenomenon.