On 19 October, 2020 residents of Ashgabat received text messages on behalf of Turkmenistan’s Ministry of Healthcare and Medical Industry urging them to wear masks in public places and keep social distancing of 2 meters.
Police officers patrol the streets and public transport to make sure the requirement is being observed. No fines are currently being imposed on those who violate the requirement.
In the meantime, two months and a half, or 75 days, have passed since the meeting of Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov with Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of WHO, as a result of which the WHO experts had been allowed to visit Turkmenistan to perform independent COVID-19 testing.
The visit has not been held so far.
It took Turkmenistan 75 days to organize the first visit of the WHO experts.
Let us recall that on 22 April, 2020 Turkmenistan’s Foreign Minister Rashid Meredov refuted accusations of hiding information about confirmed coronavirus COVID-19 cases and invited the WHO experts to visit Turkmenistan to personally make sure there are no COVID-19 patients in Turkmenistan.
The visit had been initially scheduled for early May but the WHO experts arrived in Turkmenistan only on 6 July.
The delay was explained by challenging logistics.
During the first visit the WHO experts made conclusions based on the data provided by the authorities and did not perform their own tests.In August 2020 WHO Regional Director for Europe expressed serious concern about a rise in COVID-19 negative pneumonia and urged for a WHO team to sample independently COVID-19 tests in-country and take to WHO reference labs.
The reasons behind the delay of the second WHO mission have not been disclosed.
It should be mentioned that Turkmenistan organized some evacuation flights to repatriate its citizens, including from the EU. The government business jet was also spotted in Munich airport in late August.
Turkmenistan is still denying any COVID-19 cases in the country.