{"id":101194,"date":"2021-03-31T12:50:00","date_gmt":"2021-03-31T12:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiofree.org\/?p=180883"},"modified":"2021-03-31T12:50:00","modified_gmt":"2021-03-31T12:50:00","slug":"amid-covid-19-surge-kazakhstan-admits-first-patients-to-sports-arena-converted-into-hospital","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/03\/31\/amid-covid-19-surge-kazakhstan-admits-first-patients-to-sports-arena-converted-into-hospital\/","title":{"rendered":"Amid COVID-19 Surge, Kazakhstan Admits First Patients To Sports Arena Converted Into Hospital"},"content":{"rendered":"<div><img src=\"https:\/\/www.radiofree.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/dbfd98bc-385c-4e10-af42-330e256d7e0f_cx0_cy6_cw0_w1200_r1.jpg\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\" \/><\/div>\n<div class=\"wsw\">\n<p>ALMATY, Kazakhstan &#8212; Health authorities in Kazakhstan&#8217;s largest city have admitted the first patients into a sports stadium that has been converted into a COVID-19 hospital as infection cases have multiplied, officials in Almaty said on March 31.<\/p>\n<p>The transformed Halyq Arena has 1,000 beds. It is hoped it can alleviate overcrowding spurred by the recent surge in cases.<\/p>\n<p>It opened as a 3,000-seat, double-domed arena for ice hockey and other events in 2016.<\/p>\n<p>More than 1,000 new COVID-19 cases have been registered in the past two days in the city, which fell into &#8220;red zone&#8221; status of the national coronavirus task force.<\/p>\n<p>Kazakhstan embarked last month on its vaccine campaign, using Russia&#8217;s Sputnik V injection, with plans to introduce a nationally produced vaccine later.<\/p>\n<p>By March 31, the number of registered coronavirus cases in Kazakhstan had reached 244,981, including 3,046 deaths, making it the worst-hit country in Central Asia, according to official figures.<\/p>\n<p>But the statistics among some of its neighbors strain credulity, including Turkmenistan&#8217;s claim that it has had zero COVID-19 cases even as suspicious deaths mount and local health facilities show signs of overcrowding in the tightly controlled country.<\/p>\n<p>National vaccination programs have begun in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan in the past week, both with Chinese vaccines.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n<p class=\"syndicated-attribution\">This post was originally published on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.radiofree.org\/2021\/03\/31\/amid-covid-19-surge-kazakhstan-admits-first-patients-to-sports-arena-converted-into-hospital\/\">Radio Free<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>ALMATY, Kazakhstan \u2014 Health authorities in Kazakhstan\u2019s largest city have admitted the first patients into a sports stadium that has been converted into a COVID-19 hospital as infection\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3238,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[332,337,4,106,467,211],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101194"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3238"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101194"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101194\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":101195,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101194\/revisions\/101195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}