China has issued a report saying that Kazakhstan was facing an upsurge of unrevealed pneumonia. Kazakhstan refused to accept this allegation from the officials of China as per current updates.
The embassy of China warns residents
There was a caution statement released on Thursday for the country’s residents from the embassy of China in Kazakhstan. They said that this yet undisclosed pneumonia could be very much fatal than coronavirus.
Kazakhstan’s ministry of health denied the Chinese embassy’s report on Friday saying that there was no truth in it. There is a new hike in COVID-19 infections in Kazakhstan. The whole country is seeing another lockdown due to this upsurge of the virus.
The health Ministry of Kazakhstan reported 55,000 coronavirus infections and among them, 264 patients have died as reported till July 10.
Underreporting of coronavirus
Kazakhstan as well as with other Asian countries have been facing allegations that they have manipulated the actual infected number which could be much higher than their official data. Those countries are categorizing the new outbreak of coronavirus cases into pneumonia infections as per the criticism.
The World Health Organisation said on Friday that the newfound cases of pneumonia in Kazakhstan was noteworthy. They are also investigating whether those cases could be of coronavirus infections or not.
Mike Ryan, the head of the emergency program of WHO said that the rising trajectory of coronavirus infections in Kazakhstan indicated that there could be a fair amount of non-diagnosis in the cases of coronavirus of the country.
The Embassy of China published a report on Thursday saying that Kazakhstan had faced 1,772 deaths in the first half of this year. They also added that 628 patients have been infected with pneumonia surge in June 2020 only.
The report said the new surge is mostly affecting three non-metropolitan cities – Shymkent, Atyrau and Aktobe. There were Chinese residents among those deaths.
Kazakhstan Health Ministry denies Chinese officials’ report
Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Health released a statement on Friday accepting that there was no unidentified pneumonia outbreak. They also denied the accusation of Chinese authorities and said that their data did not match with real scenarios.
The health ministry officials accepted that there were few cases of pneumonia and among them, coronavirus symptoms were there. However, those patients were tested negative. They assured that the Kazakhstan health officials abided by the guidelines of WHO for the coronavirus testing procedures.
Increasing numbers of fatalities
Aleksey Tsoy stated in a press conference on Thursday that pneumonia casualties had increased from 1,172 in just the first of six months in 2019 to 1780 during that period only. The infections by pneumonia have risen by 50 percent.
The family members of sufferers and medical practitioners of Kazakhstan expressed their concerns to BBC’s Senior Broadcast Journalist Abdujalil Abdurasulov about the questionable quality of coronavirus testing. Those people think that there must be a connection between the rising number of pneumonia infections and undiagnosed coronavirus patients. They also added that they have doubts about whether there was any test at all.
Questionable testing of Covid-19
A resident of Kazakhstan Venera Zhanalina’s father passed away and three days after that she talked to BBC about the incident. She said that her father had probable COVID-19 symptoms but in the death certificate the cause of death of her father was pneumonia. She was not sure if the medical authorities had the coronavirus test on his father or not.
Aida Jexen a 38-year-old patient tested positive of coronavirus at the end of June. She went to a hospital for treatment and took the test for the second time after a week. The report showed for the second test as negative and indicated that she had pneumonia.
She said that she had asked the doctors about the results being different. But the doctors said that the trace of coronavirus was there initially when they had taken the nasal swab test.
She added that after some time the trace reached down to her lungs. Doctors did not bother to take the much-needed sputum samples which could help them to detect if she had the infection of COVID-19 or not. They felt unnecessary about the sputum samples.
BBC reported that a medical practitioner had gone for a coronavirus test two times and the report showed negative both times. She had vivid symptoms of coronavirus as her computed tomography described.
The patient was detected as a patient of pneumonia as both her report came negative regarding coronavirus test. She made allegations that health officials were under-reporting the number of coronavirus cases. It is obvious that they don’t want to on the top of the list of coronavirus affected country.
WHO’ intervenes to confirm
WHO told the AFP news on Friday that Kazakhstan was categorizing the cases of pneumonia with the codes of the organization itself. They stated that the reported pneumonia cases of Kazakhstan did not categorize as coming out of undisclosed disease. They had not confirmed the numbers of coronavirus infections yet with the health ministry of the country.
The website of WHO mentions a code as U07.2 COVID-19, undisclosed virus. Health officials use this code at the time of inconclusive laboratory results or non-availability of results that take place during epidemiological or clinical testing of coronavirus.
