The country of Kazakhstan will extend its second national lockdown due to a rise of COVID-19 cases and a reported outbreak of an “unknown pneumonia,” Reuters reports.

The national lockdown will extend another two weeks, concluding at the end of July.

Kazakhstan said it will offer financial aid to citizens who lost their income because of the lockdown, Reuters reports.

The country entered a national lockdown — the country’s second since the pandemic began — on July 5 to stop the spread of the coronavirus, according to Reuters.

President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said in a tweet: “There are first signs now that the situation is beginning to improve. The next two weeks are important for the full stabilisation of the situation.”

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Kazakhstan made world headlines after the Chinese Embassy said there were cases of an “unknown pneumonia” deemed deadlier in than the coronavirus within the country, which I wrote about for the Deseret News. The disease was said to have killed more than 1,700 people in the country.

But Kazakhstan denied reports of the virus’ deadliness, saying the cases were “viral pneumonias of unspecified etiology” in the country, according to CNN

The World Health Organization said the “unknown pneumonia” reported in Kazakhstan were likely cases of COVID-19.

“The upward trajectory of COVID-19 in the country would suggest that many of these cases are in fact undiagnosed cases of COVID-19,” said Mike Ryan, head of the WHO’s emergencies program, according to BBC News.

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