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  • 2021-11-09 (xsd:date)
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  • Smallwood said.Smallwood is most likely correct. News stories and other secondhand reports suggest that Turkmenistan hasn’t escaped the pandemic. They include reports that the country keeps a second set of COVID-19 statistics under wraps.In July 2020, Kemal Uckun, a 57-year-old Turkish diplomat, died in Turkmenistan after a brief illness. Turkish authorities later confirmed that he died from COVID-19. Authorities in Turkmenistan denied the diagnosis. (Turkmenistan’s President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov and his regime are known for making very little information public.)In December 2020, Uckun’s widow, Guzide, sued Turkey’s foreign ministry, saying the country failed to evacuate her husband from Turkmenistan for treatment. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) quoted a Turkish embassy official as saying that, Turkmen officials refused to allow a Turkish plane to come to Turkmenistan to transport Uckun home because they did not want the world to know that coronavirus was in their country."(Editor’s note: RFE/RL is a sister U.S. government-funded news agency to VOA.)In September (en)
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  • Turkmenistan, an authoritarian Central Asian republic, has reported no COVID-19 cases since the start of the pandemic. The World Health Organization’s pandemic dashboard indicates that there have been zero COVID-19 infections, hospitalizations or deaths in Turkmenistan.The WHO database relies on information provided by national health authorities. The WHO expects that information to be accurate, as each country is legally bound to implement the body of International Health Regulations adopted in 1969.Until recently, WHO officials refrained from publicly questioning Turkmenistan’s official data. On November 9, however, WHO senior emergencies officer Catherine Smallwood told BBC News that it is doubtful that a country could have remained free of a virus while it has been spreading worldwide as a pandemic for almost two years now.""From the scientific point of view (en)
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