Kazakhstan Denies Having New Unknown Pneumonia Outbreak Reported By Chinese Embassy

Recall that the Chinese Embassy in Kazakhstan issued a warning to it’s citizens living in the country that an unknown pneumonia had killed more than 1,700 people, urging them to take preventive measures while in the country as the disease was more deadly than Covid-19.

It wrote in a statement:

“Unknown pneumonia in Kazakhstan caused 1,772 deaths in the first six months of the year, including 628 people in June alone, including Chinese citizens, the embassy said in a statement.

“The fatality rate of the disease is much higher than COVID-19,” read the embassy’s statement.

“Health officials have recorded more than 32,000 cases of pneumonia between June 29 and July 5 alone, along with 451 deaths,” said Kazakhstan’s Health Ministry.

However in a statement on Friday July 10, the Kazakhstan health ministry acknowledged the presence of “viral pneumonia of unspecified etiology,” but denied that the outbreak was new or unknown.

The statement reads partly:

“In response to these reports, the Ministry of Health of the Republic of Kazakhstan officially declares that this information does not correspond to reality,”

The statement added the “unspecified” pneumonia classification followed World Health Organization guidelines “for the registration of pneumonia when the coronavirus infection is diagnosed clinically or epidemiological but is not confirmed by laboratory testing.”

In a statement posted on its social media, the Kazakhstan Health Ministry said Minister Aleksey Tsoy had spoken about a number of pneumonia cases nationwide at a briefing on Thursday. These cases included different types of bacterial, fungal and viral pneumonia — including some of “unspecified etiology.”