On Thursday, July 9, the Chineses embassy in Kazakhstan warned its citizens that the country is experiencing an outbreak of "unknown pneumonia," which was potentially more fatal than COVID-19.
The following day, the health ministry of Kazakhstan responded that the report was "not true." The ministry said that the country had seen about 55,000 coronavirus cases with 264 deaths by July 10. The country had recently re-imposed a nationwide lockdown due to a surge in COVID-19 cases.
Furthermore, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday, July 10, that Kazakhstan's pneumonia cases were being monitored as it could be the novel coronavirus.
According to BBC, other Central Asian countries have also been confronted with similar accusations in saying officials are underreporting meaningful second waves of coronavirus. Many believe that some countries are classifying the cases as pneumonia instead.
Mike Ryan, the head of the WHO's emergencies programme says the upward course of COVID-19 in Kazakhstan suggests that many of the cases are being misdiagnosed.
Pneumonia or COVID-19?
A statement released by the Chinese embassy on Thursday stated that 1,772 people had died during the first half of 2020. Moreover, in June alone, 628 were reported dead due to the pneumonia outbreak.
It also mentioned the three provincial cities where the outbreak had taken place, namely Atyrau, Aktobe, and Shymkent. The embassy said that some who died due to the condition were Chinese nationals.
On Friday, Kazakhstan's health ministry acknowledged the presence of "viral pneumonia of unknown etiology". However, they claimed that the warning issued by the Chinese embassy was inaccurate.
They said that they had the cases classified as pneumonia, where coronavirus symptoms were present but patients tested negative for the virus. Additionally, the ministry argued that the practice fell in line with the WHO's guidelines.
According to Health Minister Aleksey Tsoy, the pneumonia fatalities had risen from 1,1272 in the first half of last year to 1,780 cases during the same period this year. Furthermore, he reported that the reported cases of pneumonia had increased by 50%.
Inaccurate and Insufficient Coronavirus Testing
Family members of victims, as well as medical practitioners, told the BBC that they suspected the increased numbers of pneumonia cases to be linked with the coronavirus. However, they claimed they were left undetected due to low-quality testing or no testing at all.
Venera Zhanalina told the BBC that her father died three days after being admitted to the hospital with symptoms of COVID-19. But later on, when she was handed the death certificate, the cause of death was declared as "pneumonia." She claims they never knew if her father was even tested for the coronavirus.
Similarly, 38-year-old Aida Jexen says she felt sick and tested positive for coronavirus at the end of June. A week later, as she was receiving treatment at a hospital, her tests turned negative, which led to her diagnosis of pneumonia.
When she asked the doctors why her diagnosis had shifted, they said the virus went down to her lungs, and to detect it, they had to take sputum samples. However, the samples were never taken, and she was left with a diagnosis of pneumonia instead.
A medical worker who wished not to be named says some do it to lower the total tally of coronavirus figures. She adds that it's because they don't want to be in the ranks for the disease. It's much easier to change statistics than to fight the virus itself.
However, in a statement issued to the AFP news agency on Friday, the WHO said Kazakhstan was categorizing pneumonia cases while following the organization's codes.
The WHO website refers to one such code "U07.2 COVID-19, virus not identified." The code is used when there is an epidemiological or clinical diagnosis of COVID-19, but laboratory confirmation is unavailable or inconclusive.
