Two citizens from Kazakhstan were tested positive for coronavirus or COVID-19 after their return from Germany, as stated by Healthcare Minister Yelzhan Birtanov on Friday, which is the first cases of the disease in the Central Asian country.
He told a briefing the patients are staying in a specialized hospital in Almaty, Kazakhstan's biggest city, where they arrived separately on March 9 and March 12. The ministry is working to quarantine people who arrived on the same March 9 flight as the first patient, he said, while all passengers and crew from the second flight have already been quarantined. Kazakhstan has already pre-emptively moved to shut down schools, colleges and universities from next week and cancel all public events.
COVID-19 outbreak
The coronavirus outbreak has infected more than 125,000 people around the world and has claimed the lives of more than 4,500 people in over 100 countries globally. The WHO has described the virus as a pandemic and there is no vaccine for the virus at this moment which originated from the Chinese city of Wuhan.
(With agency inputs)
