While the world is plagued with the COVID-19 virus, the Chinese embassy in Kazakhstan has warned of another new disease.

According to a report in South China Morning Post, the disease is a deadly “unknown pneumonia” and apparently, the death rate of this disease is higher than the novel coronavirus.

Sounds serious!

However, there’s a clash of information between the Chinese embassy and Kazakhstani officials.

While the Chinese embassy described the illness as an “unknown pneumonia”, Kazakhstani officials have been calling it pneumonia.

Increasing numbers

The Chinese embassy said there had been nearly 500 pneumonia cases in the Atyrau Aktobe and Shymkent with over 30 people in a critical condition now.

“The Chinese embassy in Kazakhstan reminds Chinese nationals here to be aware of the situation and step up prevention to lower the infection risks,” the embassy said in a statement.

The health care department chief in the capital Nur-Sultan Saule Kisikova told news agency Kazinform that some 300 people diagnosed with pneumonia are being hospitalised every day.

Meanwhile, according to a report by CGTN, the World Health Organisation (WHO) thinks that the unknown pneumonia could be COVID-19.

WHO's Health Emergencies Program health director Dr Michael Ryan said that WHO was keeping a close eye on the cases.

"We are looking at the actual testing and the quality of the testing to make sure that there have not been false negative tests for some of those other pneumonia that are provisionally tested negative."

"That is likely to be a major cause of this. In many ways, many of these pneumonia cases will also be COVID-19. They just have not been diagnosed correctly," he said.