(Nur-Sultan) Kazakhstan denied claims by the Chinese Embassy on Friday that a new virus, more deadly than COVID – 10, is spreading in several regions of this gigantic country in Central Asia.
Posted on 10 July 2020 at 709
France Media Agency
In a message to its citizens, the Chinese Embassy in Nur-Sultan, the Kazakh capital, warned on Thursday against a new disease “with a mortality rate far higher than COVID – 19 “which allegedly caused 1772 deaths in the first six months of 2020 and “628 only in June”.
The press release initially spoke of “Kazakh pneumonia” but this term was then replaced by “non-Covid pneumonia”. According to the embassy, three regions of Kazakhstan are affected and Chinese are among the victims.
The claims “of the Chinese media” do not “correspond to reality”, assured the Kazakh Ministry of Health on Friday in a press release quoted by the local media, without however mentioning the press release from the embassy of China.
The ministry reported patients registered as suffering from pneumonia and not from the new coronavirus, although they had symptoms, because the results of the COVID tests – 19 were negative.
Asked about the press release from his embassy in Nur-Sultan, Chinese diplomacy spokesman Zhao Lijian told reporters that China “also wants more information”, adding that Beijing ” hope to continue working with Kazakhstan to fight the epidemic. “
The Kazakh authorities reintroduced containment measures last week to counter the resurgence of cases of coronavirus: in total, the country had officially registered Friday 57 747 contaminations and 264 death but, as with his neighbors in Central Asia, he is accused by observers and NGOs to minimize the scale of the pandemic.
The lack of good quality tests is cited as a reason for this underestimation.
In an article dealing with the denial of the Ministry of Health, the pro-government site Tengri News quotes a doctor who assures that the rise in cases of pneumonia is “a manifestation of the coronavirus”.
In neighboring Kyrgyzstan, the Ministry of Health announced that pneumonia would now be included among the cases of COVID – 19.