COVID-19: Turkmenistan allows WHO to conduct independent virus sampling

Amidst the coronavirus pandemic, Turkmenistan has given permission to the World Health Organisation to perform independent testing for the virus in the country. According to reports, Turkmenistan is currently officially free of COVID-19 but the World Health Organisation has been concerned by the alarming rise in pneumonia cases in the country and therefore would like to conduct testing of its own.

Turkmenistan approves independent WHO testing

 As per reports, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and Turkmenistan’s leader Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov conducted a teleconference on August 7. While the teleconference which was broadcasted on Turkmenistan’s state tv channel did not mention the rising cases of pneumonia, Hans Kluge, the WHO’s Europe director who was also part of the call later tweeted saying that Turkmenistan had agreed to led WHO conduct independent virus testing in the country.

According to reports, a mission from WHO that visited Turkmenistan last month had advised the country to adopt coronavirus preventive measures such as contact tracing but did not comment on the presence of the virus there. The authorities in Turkmenistan have since implemented a nationwide lockdown and asked its citizens to wear masks citing dust particles in the air carried by the wind.

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The deadly coronavirus which began in an illegal wet market in Wuhan, China last year has quickly spread all over the world, the virus named COVID-19 by the World Health Organisation has infected 19,379,517 people worldwide and the global death toll stands at 721,375. As per the John Hopkins coronavirus resource centre, the United States has reported a total of at least 4,941,796 positive virus cases and has a death toll of 161,356. The US currently has the highest number of reported cases in the world, making it the epicentre of the deadly virus.

WHO believes youth causing a resurgence of the virus

Meanwhile, the World Health Organisation has recently stated that it believes that one of the primary causes for the recent spike in COVID-19 cases is young people who are using the relaxation of lockdown measures to visit nightclubs, coffee shops, restaurants and beaches. The WHO also added that a large portion of the new coronavirus cases reported in the last three months are those from those aged 15-24.

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