A quarantine checkpoint in Kazakhstan . Photo by Bagdat Asylbek, Fergana
The relaxation of existing lockdown measures in Kazakhstan will be carried out in three stages, chief medical officer Aizhan Esmagambetova has announced. Esmagambetova’s remarks were reported by Fergana’s correspondent in Kazakhstan.
According to Esmagambetova, the first stage will be implemented when the weekly rate of infection drops to no more than 7%. The second stage will begin when the infection rate reaches 5% per week, and the third stage when it drops to 2%. No precise details seem to have been given about what will happen at the 5% and 2% marks, but Esmagambetov recently stated that, at the 7% weekly rate, Kazakhs will be allowed to leave their homes (while wearing masks if in the company of others) and visit parks and squares.
It should be noted that the weekly rate of infection in Almaty, where the highest number of infections have been recorded, has already dropped to 3.8% as of 12 May.
At a meeting of the special government commission to oversee the state of emergency yesterday, Kazakh president Kassym-Zhomart Toqaev had already stated that the current lockdown measures in the country would be lifted gradually, in accordance with the improving circumstances in each region.
As of 11 May, some stores have been reopened, along with beauty salons, parks and educational centres. Domestic flights are also to be gradually resumed. Restrictions will, however, remain on other forms of transport between regions.
The latest announcements from Kazakhstan follow similar staggered lockdown exit strategies in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. In Uzbekistan, the country’s regions have been divided into red, yellow and green zones according to the level of infection – with green regions considered free of infection, yellow regions where there are still COVID-19 patients but no new cases have been established in the last two weeks, and red for the remaining regions. Depending on the colour, different sorts of service sector branches are permitted to resume their activities. In yellow and green zones, shopping centres, hairdressers and beauty salons are allowed to operate, along with non-fixed-route taxis. If any new cases are confirmed in yellow or green regions then they will immediately join the list of red zones, subject to the same restrictions on economic activity.
