On the back of the G7 summit in Hiroshima, Emmanuel Macron will become the first French president to make an official trip to Mongolia – a landlocked nation between China and Russia.
By Reuters Staff
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ULAANBAATAR, Jan 21 (Reuters) - Mongolia’s Prime Minister Khuresukh Ukhnaa has submitted his resignation to parliament after protests in the capital Ulaanbaatar about the government’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, the state news agency Montsame reported on Thursday.
The protests erupted on Wednesday in response to allegations that the government had mishandled the relocation of a COVID-19 patient and her newborn baby, Montsame said.
After earning praise for its handling of the coronavirus in the early stages, Mongolia has recently been battling an outbreak caused by an infected driver entering from Russia. (Reporting by Anand Tumurtogoo and David Stanway; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
2021-01-21 17:34:31
Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/. Khuresukh Ukhnaa has just announced that he will be stepping down as the Prime Minister of Mongolia.
Yesterday, January 20, Deputy Prime Minister Ya.Sodbaatar and Minister of Health T.Munkhsaikhan submitted their resignation to the Prime Minister because of public pressure and protests over a mishandling of a relocation of a COVID-19 patient and her newborn baby from maternity hospital to the National Center for
Communicable Diseases.
When announcing his resignation, Prime Minister Khurelsukh expressed regret for the situation and made an apology on behalf of himself and ‘those officials who failed their responsibility’.
“The government of Mongolia and the State Emergency Commission had been mobilizing all efforts throughout the period defined by the pandemic, with timely measures of border closures and implementing heightened emergency state. There is no death from COVID-19 yet.”