COVID-19-like pneumonia sparks speculation

Kazakh authorities expected to provide more info to understand unspecified disease

Kazakh authorities refuted Chinese media reports on an “unknown pneumonia” on Friday, even if local media had reported that the unknown disease was more deadly than COVID-19. Some medical experts in China did not rule out the possibility that the socalled unknown pneumonia is actually the novel coronavirus, while the Kazakh side has been suggested to provide more information for prevention work.

The Chinese Embassy in Kazakhstan on Thursday warned Chinese citizens living in the country of a local pneumonia of unknown source, which local media reported has a “much higher” fatality rate than COVID-19. Organizations including Kazakhstan’s health department are studying the “virus of this pneumonia,” the embassy said, quoting media.

The unknown pneumonia in Kazakhstan caused 1,772 deaths in the first six months of the year, with 628 in June alone and including Chinese citizens, the embassy said in a statement on its WeChat account on Thursday, citing Kazakh media reports.

However, the

COVID-19-like

Ministry of Health of Kazakhstan on Friday refuted reports about an unknown pneumonia in the country. The ministry also said in a post published on Facebook that the country continues to monitor pneumonia in line with the World Health Organization’s classification. It says that Kazakh Minister of Health Alexey Tsoy told a media briefing that there are bacterial, fungal, viral and “unspecified” pneumonia in the country, saying that proves the reports from Chinese media are untrue.

A media report claiming the number of patients affected by the pneumonia in Kazakhstan “is two to three times higher than that of COVID-19” came from Kazakh international news agency Kazinform on Thursday, but was deleted on Friday.

Various possibilities

Based on the little information disclosed thus far, it is difficult to conclude whether the pneumonia found in Kazakhstan is COVID-19 or a new pneumonia, Wang Guangfa, a leading Chinese respiratory expert at Peking University First Hospital in Beijing, who was also among the first group of experts dispatched by the Chinese National Health Commission to Wuhan in early January, told the Global Times.

“Local health authorities should clearly state what the situation of patients is. It’s also likely that local authorities lack the capabilities to diagnose COVID-19,” he said.

There are many kinds of viral pneumonia. Doctors are sometimes unable to confirm pneumonia through clinical diagnosis, Wang said, noting that in some remote areas in Kazakhstan, local hospitals do not have adequate testing means and cannot diagnose pneumonia.

Since mid-June, some regions and cities, like Atyrau Region, Aktobe State and Shymkent, have recorded higher pneumonia cases than the same period last year.

Jin Dongyan, a professor at the School of Biomedical Sciences at the University of Hong Kong, said that there is a big possibility that this “unknown pneumonia” is COVID-19, and local authorities were unable to identify it in a timely manner due to inadequate medical conditions.

Some experts said they won’t rule out the virus detected in Kazakhstan as a new genotype, following its faster virus mutation. “The virus has various genotypes, which could not be detected by old measures, like existing nucleic acid test kits,” Yang Zhanqiu, deputy director of the pathogen biology department at Wuhan University, told the Global Times on Friday.

The unknown pneumonia has given rise to heated discussions among Chinese people living in Kazakhstan, who remain anxious about COVID-19, and some Chinese students are becoming more eager to return to China as the situation worsens.

China expects to learn more about this unknown pneumonia and hopes to work together with Kazakhstan to fight the epidemic and safeguard public health in both countries, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said on Friday.

China and Kazakhstan remain in close cooperation in fighting the pandemic. On July 4, the latest batch of humanitarian assistance sent by the Chinese government arrived at the Almaty International Airport to help fight COVID-19.