On April 24, Vice Minister of Health Lyazzat Aktayeva responded to a doctor from Almaty Irina Akizhanova, who earlier posted a video criticizing the government’s approach to tackling coronavirus pandemic that went viral on social media.
Akizhanova called Kazakh government’s way of dealing with coronavirus a “sophisticated farce”, requested the development of vaccines against the virus and announced her readiness to become a blood plasma donor. She also said Kazakhstanis who died from heart attack, stroke and other noncommunicable diseases are registered as coronavirus victims.
“The government was supposed to collect plasma that contains antibodies from people who recovered from the virus, test vaccines on animals and human volunteers. Instead they distributed 45,000 tenge among their hanger-ons and families of the deceased who do not in fact exist, saying at last “don’t worry, guys, we won’t double-check anything,” the doctor claimed. She also complained about her house being quarantined and suggested taking her blood samples for vaccine testing instead.
In her official response, Vice Minister Lyazzat Aktayeva stressed special commissions have been set up to study all deaths where experts look for a causal relationship to identify the immediate cause of death. To date, 21 patients died from coronavirus infection.
“Each COVID-19 case, be it alive or deceased person, must be registered. At that, coronavirus may be the cause of death or a concomitant disease. For example, a patient died of pancreatic necrosis or stroke with COVID-19 being found when alive or post-mortem, but there were no manifestations of infection. In this case, coronavirus is not considered to be the immediate cause of death,” she noted.
Vice Minister said in case Irina Akizhanova meets all the required criteria as a donor, she is more than welcome to contact the National Blood Center in Almaty. She noted while the doctor is doubting her colleagues’ work, “the country is celebrating every success in the fight against coronavirus, including 7 patients who were weaned off mechanical ventilation, 38 who got transferred from intensive care to the in-patient department and 551 people who have recovered”.
As of today, 1695 patients continue to receive treatment, of which 848 have clinical manifestations of varying severity (including 137 patients with fever and 149 with pneumonia); 290 patients with moderate to severe COVID-19; 30 patients are admitted in the intensive care unit.
“14 days of self-isolation is a minimal incubation period, if you manage it, you and your loved ones might be able to bypass the virus. I understand it is hard to stay home for 14 days. But there is a hotline for psychological advice. I wish everyone more patience, as soon as the COVID-19 spread decreases, quarantine will be eased off,” she added.
