TASHKENT (Satrapia, TASS) — The first coronavirus case has been identified in Uzbekistan, the Uzbek Health Ministry’s Agency for Sanitary and Epidemiological Welfare said in a statement on Sunday.

The statement said:

Uzbekistan’s Institute of Virology has identified the COVID-19 virus in the samples of an Uzbek citizen who recently returned from France.

However, from an epidemiological point of view, it is unlikely that the Central Asian countries have remained immune to the epidemic. Rather, this appearance of calm should be put down to a lack of screening.