The Chinese embassy in Kazakhstan has issued a warning about an unknown pneumonia sweeping through the central Asian country after more than 600 people died of pneumonia in June.
“The death rate of this disease is much higher than the novel coronavirus. The country’s health departments are conducting comparative research into the pneumonia virus, but have yet to identify the virus,” the embassy said in a warning to Chinese citizens in the country.
“The fatality rate of the disease is much higher than Covid-19,” read the embassy’s statement.
It wasn’t immediately clear if Chinese officials had more information about the pneumonia or any specific reason to call it unknown: Kazakh media have only said it is pneumonia.
It was also not known if the WHO had been informed about the “unknown pneumonia”.
President Kassim-Jomart Tokayev has said the country could be facing a second wave of infections.
Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, according to the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post, said in a televised address on Wednesday that the situation was still serious, and it was too early to relax restrictions.
He added the country was “in fact facing the second coronavirus wave coupled with a huge uptick in pneumonia cases”.
