On Friday March 13, the Kazakh authorities reportedly announced the first three cases of COVID-19 in the country, according to Eurasianet.
The government late last month introduced a 14-day quarantine for people traveling from countries already affected by COVID-19, but the impact of that policy on the general mood has been minimal and in any case, with the exception of Chinese nationals, most people could get into Kazakhstan with relative ease.
While Kyrgyzstan has installed a thermal imager on the border with Kazakhstan, as of March 1, Kazakh authorities had adopted few such measures. Health workers in international airports are now checking the temperature of arriving travelers, according to Eurasianet.
Alina Telebayeva flew on March 9 into Kazakhstan’s capital, Nur-Sultan, from France, currently the European country with the second-highest rate of new infections, via the German city of Frankfurt. She told Eurasianet that she was subjected to no medical check-ups or any talk of quarantine.
The Health Ministry on March 9 said, however, that there were around 3,700 people who had arrived from overseas in quarantine as part of the anti-coronavirus measures.
Kazakh chief sanitary doctor, Zhandarbek Bekshin, on March 10 predicted that the time for waiting was soon coming to an end. “Somewhere in the period of March 11-16, we in Kazakhstan will finally have coronavirus […] As soon as somebody has coronavirus, we will adopt special measures,” he said at a press conference.
On March 12, Health Minister Yelzhan Birtanov said at a briefing that Kazakhstan had already used 5,000 of the 15,000 COVID-19 test kits it had received from Russia, China and the WHO. He announced plans to purchase an additional 60,000 kits.
Meanwhile, Kazakh Minister Yelzhan Birtanov told an audience at a press briefing on March 13 that two Kazakh citizens have tested positive for coronavirus after returning from Germany, which were the first of the disease in the Central Asian region. Two cases of coronavirus have reportedly been confirmed in Almaty.
According to the minister, two Kazakh nationals – a woman and a man – have tested positive for coronavirus after returning from Germany. The man arrived in Almaty on March 9 and the woman arrived in Almaty on March 12, the minister said.
The patients are reportedly staying in a specialized hospital in Almaty.
According to Birtanov, there were 73 passengers on board on March 9. Medical workers have reportedly started to isolate them. “They will be quarantined for 14 days. On March 12, there were only 12 people, including crew members, on board. They have already been quarantined,” the minister noted.
Asked about the possibility of declaring a state of emergency in Almaty, the minister noted that Almaty mayor has the right to declare the state of emergency in the city.
The healthcare minister himself does not yet see the need for this.
Meanwhile, Bulgaria has declared state of emergency over coronavirus. The Bulgarian parliament on March 13 voted unanimously to declare a state of emergency until April 13 to contain the spread of coronavirus after the number of confirmed cases in the country rose to 23.
The state of emergency will allow for travel bans to and from countries with large coronavirus outbreaks, the closing of schools and universities, and permit police to intervene when imposed isolation of infected people is not observed.
Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan still insist they have no coronavirus cases.
