NUR-SULTAN – The epidemiological situation with COVID-19 is stabilizing in Kazakhstan, Kazakh Healthcare Minister Azhar Giniyat said at a Feb. 22 government meeting.
Minister Azhar Giniyat. Photo credit: primeminister.kz. Click to see the map in full size.
“The epidemiological situation in Kazakhstan on coronavirus infection is stabilizing after the daily increase in incidence over the last week decreased to 1,200 cases per day, which was reflected in the rate of infection, which since Jan. 27 is less than one and equal to 0.6,” said Giniyat.
According to the epidemiological situation assessment matrix, Kazakhstan is in the green zone, and only the city of Almaty and the North Kazakhstan Region are in the red zone, and the Kostanai and Pavlodar regions are in the yellow zone.
At the same time, the average daily number of coronavirus cases decreased 34 times over the last month, averaging 1,200. Kazakhstan reported 483 new cases over the past 24 hours, and the total number of cases since the beginning of the pandemic has reached nearly 1.3 million.
“The number of people receiving inpatient treatment decreased by 2.3 times, outpatients by 5.1 times. As of today, more than 30,000 patients continue to be treated in healthcare organizations, 86 percent of them are outpatients and 14 percent are inpatients,” she said.
Over the past month, the occupancy of infectious disease beds decreased 2.2 times from 38 percent to 17 percent and intensive care beds from 20 percent to 14 percent.
She also noted the progress in vaccination efforts. According to her, 82.1 percent of the eligible population have received the first component, which accounts for 53.4 percent of the total population of Kazakhstan. 78.5 percent of the eligible population, or 9.4 million people, have been fully immunized against the virus.
“Today, revaccination remains one of the leading preventive measures. The rate of revaccination has been increasing this year – 2.43 million people have been revaccinated to date, which is 52.6 percent of the eligible population. In order to maintain the existing level of collective immunity, it is necessary to maintain the rate of revaccination,” said Giniyat.
The stabilization of the situation comes two months after the first omicron variant cases were confirmed in Kazakhstan at the beginning of January causing a significant surge in cases.
Giniyat said that the results of the genotyping tests reveal the circulation of the omicron variant in all regions of the country, which accounted for 72 percent of the total number of samples examined. This is all while the delta variant also continues to circulate.
Kazakhstan recently announced the easing of coronavirus-related restrictions both for businesses and people.
“Taking into account the easing of restrictions, business entities must ensure public safety at their facilities and strict compliance with the established algorithms, which will maintain the positive dynamics of the current epidemiological situation,” said the minister.
