BAKU, Azerbaijan, March 13
By Nargiz Sadikhova - Trend:
The capacities of Kazakhstan’s Almaty city to manufacture three million medical face masks a month will be increased, city’s Head of Entrepreneurship and Investments Department Yerkebulan Orazalin said, Trend reports with reference to the city’s akimat (administration).
He said that the city’s akimat is currently taking measures to provide city with necessary amount of medical equipment, especially of masks and antiseptic agents.
“We have a company which manufactures masks, its current capacity is three million masks a month. In the nearest days, we’ll launch additional production to meet local demand,” Orazalin said.
He added that new equipment for the plant will be purchased soon which will allow to increase masks production volume to eight million masks a month.
Orazalin also noted that local pharmacies will be supplied with additional volume of masks.
In order to avoid speculation on the market, additional funds will be allocated to ventures to purchase raw materials, which will give them an opportunity to influence products supply volumes and to directly make contracts with the largest pharmacies in the city.
Additional funds will also be allocated for production of antiseptic agents, sanitizers, Orazalin said.
On March 13, 2020, first two cases of coronavirus infection have been detected in Kazakhstan among those who arrived in Almaty city from Germany.
The outbreak in the Chinese city of Wuhan - which is an international transport hub - began at a fish market in late December 2019. The number of people killed by the disease has surpassed 4,700. Over 128,000 people have been confirmed as infected. Meanwhile, over 68,000 people have reportedly recovered.
Some sources claim the coronavirus outbreak started as early as November 2019. The symptoms include cough, headache, fatigue, fever, aching and difficulty breathing. It is primarily spread through airborne contact or contact with contaminated objects. In mild cases, according to the Chinese authorities, treatment takes about a week, in severe cases - two or more.
The World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 a pandemic on March 11.
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