Year 2020 in Review: Kazakhstan Struggling With Structural Reform Amid COVID-19 Crisis
Publication: Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 18 Issue: 14
Former president Nursultan Nazarbaev votes during the January 2021 parliamentary elections in Kazakhstan (Source: economy.kz)
As in much of the rest of the world, the year 2020 in Kazakhstan was dominated by the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, which to date has claimed the lives of more than 2,300 Kazakhstanis, according to a government-run information portal. Since August 2020, the authorities have been keeping separate records of people who have been sick with severe pneumonia that resembles the novel coronavirus but had nonetheless tested negative for SARS-Cov-2. To date, more than 530 within that category have died. Official Kazakhstani statistics have been regularly subject to speculation regarding their accuracy and objectivity, although this tendency to question government data is certainly not unique to Kazakhstan or even its i