NUR-SULTAN – Nearly 1.5 million people have received at least one dose of vaccine against COVID-19 in Kazakhstan as of May 4, said Kazakh Minister of Healthcare Alexey Tsoy at a May 4 government meeting.
Vaccination has accelerated in April, after Tokayev criticized officials for slow vaccine rollout. Photo credit: astana.gov.kz. Click to see the map in full size.
As of today, 1,422,204 people have received at least one dose of vaccine, and 347,474 have been fully immunized against the virus since the mass vaccination campaign kicked off on Feb.1.
Kazakhstan has so far administered 1.8 million vaccine doses.
Three vaccines are currently available in Kazakhstan – Russia’s Sputnik V produced at the Karaganda-based pharmaceutical plant, the locally developed inactivated QazVac vaccine, and the Hayat-Vax produced in the United Arab Emirates.
The citizens can choose any of the three vaccines.
“The pace of vaccination has accelerated. Compared to April 1, the number of people immunized with the first and second doses per day has increased 12-fold, from 11,000 to 135,000 people per day. Nearly 11,000 health workers are involved and more than 1,000 vaccination points and 400 mobile vaccination points are deployed. Vaccination facilities work in two shifts until midnight and on weekends,” said Tsoy.
Epidemiological situation
There are currently nine regions in the high-risk red zone – the cities of Nur-Sultan, Almaty, and Shymkent as well as Akmola, West Kazakhstan, Zhambyl, Karaganda, Kyzylorda, and Pavlodar regions. Last week, the Pavlodar and Zhambyl regions moved into the red zone.
Five regions are in the medium-risk yellow zone – the Aktobe, Atyrau, East Kazakhstan, Almaty, and Mangystau regions.
The Kostanay, Turkistan, and North Kazakhstan regions remain in the green zone.
According to Tsoy, the situation globally does not show any signs of improvement. To date, more than 153 million cases have been confirmed with more than 600,000 cases being reported every day.
Over the past week, the morbidity rate decreased by two percent, while the mortality rate has remained the same.
The occupancy of infectious disease beds in the country remains at 42 percent, and 28 percent are in intensive care units. Nur-Sultan and Almaty are leading in terms of occupancy rates with 60 percent and 57 percent, respectively.
“Given the worsening epidemiological situation in India, where daily cases reach up to 400,000, special measures were taken to prevent the import of the variant widespread in India. So people arriving in Kazakhstan and visiting India in the last 14 days are subject to isolation at home for 14 days, regardless of whether they have had COVID-19 PCR test results or not and whether they were vaccinated against COVID-19 or not,” said Tsoy.
