Kazakhstan: Follow-up
Date: Fri 10 Jul 2020
Source: Live Science [edited]
Deadly 'unknown pneumonia' outbreak in Kazakhstan is probably undiagnosed COVID-19 | Live Science
A Chinese embassy has issued a warning about a deadly "unknown
pneumonia" circulating in Kazakhstan, but authorities outside of China
say
these cases are still likely COVID-19.
On Thursday ([9 Jul 2020]), officials with the embassy in Kazakhstan
issued an alert to residents that the unidentified pneumonia had
killed more than 1700 people in Kazakhstan, including Chinese
citizens, according to CNN. "The death rate of this disease is much
higher than the novel coronavirus," the alert said, according to
Newsweek.
However, authorities in Kazakhstan denied such an outbreak, saying
that "this information does not correspond to reality," CNN reported.
A statement from Kazakhstan's health ministry said that there were
"viral pneumonias of unspecified etiology" in the country. However,
the statement said that the classification of
"unspecified" was used
for cases of COVID-19 that had been diagnosed based on symptoms but
not confirmed with laboratory testing.
In a press briefing for the World Health Organization (WHO) on Friday
([10 Jul 2020]), Dr. Michael Ryan, executive director of the WHO
Health Emergencies Program, said that the news of this outbreak "is
certainly on our radar," and that the organization is working with
authorities in Kazakhstan to investigate it.
These cases are likely COVID-19, given that there has been a big surge
in COVID-19 in the country recently, with more than 10 000 such cases
diagnosed there in the past week, Ryan said. WHO is now looking at the
quality of testing conducted and whether some of these unspecified
pneumonia cases are due to false-negative test results for COVID-19,
he said.
Ryan noted that clusters of atypical pneumonia can occur "anywhere in
the world at any time," and can be due to a number of causes,
including Legionnaires' disease (severe pneumonia caused by bacteria
in the _Legionella_ genus) or influenza.
"The upward trajectory of COVID-19 cases in the country would suggest
that many of these cases are in fact undiagnosed cases of COVID-19,"
Ryan said. But, he added "we keep an open mind."
[Byline: Rachael Rettner]
--
Communicated by:
ProMED-mail
[My thoughts exactly. We had a similar "unexplained pneumonia" with
high mortality report from Kano, Nigeria in the early stages of the
initial surge of COVID-19 that was investigated by the Nigeria CDC and
found to be due to COVID-19 (see Undiagnosed deaths - Nigeria (KN):
Promed Post – ProMED-mail and Undiagnosed deaths
- Nigeria (02): (KN) RFI responses, relation to COVID-19
Promed Post – ProMED-mail
We will continue to
monitor findings,
but I strongly suspect this is due to COVID-19.]
BBM
