Kazakhstan authorities denied recent reports of an “unknown pneumonia” that Chinese officials said is deadlier than the coronavirus, CNN reports.
On Thursday, the Chinese Embassy in Kazakhstan said an “unknown pneumonia” deadlier than the coronavirus had killed more than 1,700 people in the country, as I reported for the Deseret News.
The Chinese embassy said new cases of the pneumonia increased from mid-June. There may have been hundreds of cases a day, the embassy said, according to the South China Morning Post.
The Kazakstan health ministry said Friday that the “viral pneumonias of unspecified etiology” existed in the country. But the country said the outbreak is not new or unknown as the Chinese government had touted, according to CNN.
“In response to these reports, the Ministry of Health of the Republic of Kazakhstan officially declares that this information does not correspond to reality,” the statement read.
According to CNN, the country said the pneumonia classification followed guidelines from the World Health Organization “for the registration of pneumonia when the coronavirus infection is diagnosed clinically or epidemiologically but is not confirmed by laboratory testing.”
A spokesman for the Chinese Ministy of Foreign Affairs told reporters Friday: “We would also like to get more information. China hopes to work together with Kazakhstan to fight the epidemic and to safeguard the two countries public health security.”
As I wrote Thursday, reports of an “unknown pneumonia”sound eerily similar to early reports of the coronavirus, which went on to cause a coronavirus pandemic.
Back in January, Chinese health officials said they were worried over a mysterious and unknown virus that had infected dozens of people.