July 10, 2020

Andrew Campbell 

On July 9th, a Chinese embassy in Kazakhstan published a warning, claiming that the outbreak of an unidentified pneumonia, whose death rate was potentially higher than COVID-19, had led to death of over 1700 people in Kazakhstan in the first half of 2020, including Chinese citizens.

Although Kazakhstan’s health ministry admitted the presence of "viral pneumonias of unspecified etiology", they denied the report published by the Chinese embassy, as the disease had been classified as pneumonia cases, in accordance with World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines, rather than an “unknown pneumonia”.

Dr. Michael Ryan, executive director of the WHO Health Emergencies Program, stated in a press conference on July 10th that WHO has been aware of the pneumonia’s outbreak, and is working with Kazakhstan authorities to investigate the disease. 

Considering the upward trajectory of COVID-19 in Kazakhstan, with more than 10,000 cases last week, WHO believed the disease might be undiagnosed COVID-19. WHO tried to make sure there haven’t been false negative tests by looking at the actual testing and the quality of testing.