Cases spike: Kyrgyzstan medics face ‘huge’ virus threat

BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan: Kyrgyzstan admitted on Thursday its medical staff face a "huge threat" from COVID-19, with infections within the medical community accounting for almost 20 percent of the Central Asian country’s total.

A health ministry spokesperson said that a lack of personal protective equipment (PPE) had contributed to the coronavirus infecting about a third of epidemiological staff in the country and more than a hundred medics in all.

"Mostly medics are using disposable masks instead of proper respirator masks," ministry representative Elena Bayalinova told AFP by telephone. "Doctors have not been trained, especially in the regions. Nurses and hospital kitchen workers did not have the necessary skills -- they did not know how to properly remove protective suits," Bayalinova said.

"The country was not ready for the epidemic. It took us by surprise." World Health Organisation Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said last week that health-worker infection rates of more than 10 percent in some countries’ totals represented "an alarming trend".

WHO’s country office in Kyrgyzstan did not immediately respond to a request for comment on infection rates among medical staff at 17.5 percent.

Kyrgyzstan’s parliament passed a motion on Wednesday demanding the government improve working conditions for medics and investigate allegations that security services threatened them for speaking out over poor conditions.

Public concern for hospital staff grew this month when a doctor named Bektur Apyshev in the northern Chui region posted on social media a picture of a mask he said his clinic had asked him to wear.

"A gnat could fly through that, let alone COVID-19," he wrote. "Then they are surprised when medics get infected." Apyshev later appeared in a video in which he apologised "for providing false information".

The video -- which many assumed Apyshev had been forced into making -- led social media users to film themselves making ironic apologies for things like opposing corruption and trying to make a positive difference in society.

Kyrgyzstan, an impoverished ex-Soviet republic with a population of six million registered 466 COVID-19 infections, according to official figures on Thursday, and five deaths.