Kyrgyzstan’s Security Council has recommended that Prime Minister Mukhammedkalyi Abylgaziev declare a national state of emergency beginning on March 22 due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The recommendation, made during a Security Council meeting in Bishkek on March 21, was announced by President Sooronbai Jeenbekov’s office.
Local officials in Kyrgyzstan have already declared a state of emergency in the southern district of Nookat, where three coronavirus cases were reported on March 20.
A state of emergency has also been announced by local officials in the Suzak district, where three men have tested positive for coronavirus.
All six confirmed cases in Kyrgyzstan are people who recently returned to Kyrgyzstan from Saudi Arabia.
Uzbekistan
Uzbekistan’s Health Ministry announced four more confirmed coronavirus infections on March 21, raising the total number in the country to 37.
The ministry said a total of 3,200 people who had contact with the infected patients have been placed in quarantine.
All kindergartens, schools, and universities in Uzbekistan have been temporarily closed and public gatherings have been prohibited.
The Transport Ministry said on March 20 that it had suspended international travel into the country for 40 days. The regulation does not affect cargo shipments, it said.
Kazakhstan
In Kazakhstan, five more coronavirus cases were reported on March 20, including the first two cases outside Nur-Sultan, the capital, and the country’s largest city, Almaty.
With three more cases in Almaty and two in the central city of Qaraghandy, the total number of coronavirus infections in Kazakhstan on March 21 was 49.
Nur-Sultan and Almaty have been sealed off since March 19, with police, security forces, and military personnel blocking roads and highways within and around the two cities.
In Tajikistan, the government suspended all international flights starting on March 20. No coronavirus cases have been reported by authorities in Tajikistan so far.
In Turkmenistan, RFE/RL correspondents report that the capital, Ashgabat, has been surrounded with security checkpoints since March 19 in an attempt by authorities to regulate entries into the city.
Only residents of Ashgabat are allowed to enter the city now, and travel between cities has been restricted, RFE/RL correspondents report.
Turkmenistan also had not officially confirmed any cases of coronavirus as of March 21.
Ukraine
Ukraine has declared a state of emergency in the capital and two regions as a measure to counteract the spread of the novel coronavirus.
Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said on March 20 that a state of emergency had been declared in the city of Kyiv, the east-central Dnipropetrovsk region, and the western Ivano-Fankivsk region.
“No new restrictions are yet to be expected. The emergency mode is designed to mobilize efforts to combat the spread of COVID-19,” he wrote on Telegram.
Earlier, states of emergency were declared in Kyiv and Zhytomyr oblasts in the north-central part of the country and the southwestern region of Chernivtsi.
Under the state of emergency, the heads of the affected regions are expected to implement coordinated measures to curtail the spread of the virus and to submit daily reports to the Health Ministry.
As of the end of March 20, Ukraine had reported 41 coronavirus infections and three fatalities. The total represents a rise of 15 cases over the past 24 hours.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy reported that the first Ukrainian had recovered from COVID-19, the illness caused by the novel coronavirus.
“A patient from Chernivtsi has again been tested for the coronavirus, and his test was negative for the second time,” Zelenskiy said in a national address. “This means we can officially say that Ukraine now has its first person to have recovered from the coronavirus. He will be discharged from the hospital today.”
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s parliament reported that it would continue working normally even though lawmaker Serhiy Shakhov of the Dovira (Faith) parliamentary group tested positive for the coronavirus on March 18.
“We have switched to working in committees,” Verkhovna Rada speaker Dmytro Razumkov told Interfax. “This does not mean quarantine, closure, or stocktaking…. We are working in a regular mode, just like we did before.”
Russia
Russia’s official tally on the coronavirus early on March 21 showed the total number of infections at 253, a day after Moscow’s coronavirus crisis center announced 54 confirmed new cases across the country.
One coronavirus patient, a 79-year-old woman, has died. Russian authorities said the cause of her death was not officially registered as COVID-19 because an autopsy revealed she had died of a blood clot.
But a global resource center at Johns Hopkins University early on March 21 was listing the woman as Russia’s only confirmed coronavirus death.
Russia’s Federal Service for the Oversight of Consumer Protection and Welfare said on March 21 that more than 36,000 people were under medical observation in the country due to the situation with coronavirus.
Since the pandemic hit Russia, 12 patients have recovered from the virus and have been released from medical institutions.
President Vladimir Putin on March 17 called the coronavirus pandemic “an external threat.”
Putin assured Russian citizens that the situation was “generally under control.” But many Russians have expressed distrust about official accounts of the outbreak and fear the true situation is much worse than they are being told.
Russia has temporarily barred entry into the country of foreigners because of the pandemic. Russian officials also have imposed restrictions on passenger flights and public gatherings.
Russia’s national health watchdog has decreed that “all individuals arriving in Russia” must be isolated for medical observation.
Iran
The death toll from coronavirus outbreak is nearly 11,400 people around the world, with Europe at the center of the pandemic as the number of confirmed cases globally topped 275,000.
Iran’s official death toll is the third highest in the world at 1,433 — although many Iranians believe the government in Tehran is underreporting the extent of the outbreak there.
According to Tehran’s official count, there were more than 19,620 infections in the country by early March 21.
According to a tally by Johns Hopkins University early on March 21, the confirmed number of cases worldwide has reached 275,434 — including 11,399 deaths.