A World Health Organization official tells the BBC it is 'unlikely the virus is not circulating'.
Last year, Turkmenistan recommended residents wear masks because of "dust" even as the government insisted there were no cases
Turkmenistan is one of only a handful of countries, including North Korea, that claim to have no coronavirus cases. Dr Smallwood's comments represent the first public challenge by the WHO to Turkmenistan's claim, as a growing number of Covid cases are being reported in the country informally. Dr Smallwood said it was more important to "build a dialogue" with administrations like President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov's, rather than "make statements that may not in fact lead to the type of actions that we would want to see".Analysts say that Turkmenistan's official statistics on coronavirus are unreliable.
The government was now open to discussing health measures against Covid-19, Dr Smallwood said. "And that's what we focus on because at the end of the day, these are the measures that will contribute to the protection of the population." "It's not scientific," Ms Yaylymova said. "You can't really deal with the problem if you cannot measure it. And the WHO is supposed to promote science."
"They accurately selected the doctors that the delegation would meet in the country and they took them to the 'right' hospitals and showed them the 'right' patients," he said.
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