London: The emergency chief of the World Health Organization says the agency believes an unexplained pneumonia outbreak in Kazakhstan is likely due to the coronavirus.
Dr. Michael Ryan says Kazakh authorities have reported more than 10,000 lab-confirmed COVID-19 cases in the last week and just under 50,000 cases and 264 deaths as of Tuesday.
We're looking at the actual testing and the quality of testing to make sure that there haven't been false negative tests for some of those other cases of pneumonia that are provisionally tested negative, Ryan said.
He added that many pneumonia cases were likely to be COVID-19 and just have not been diagnosed correctly.
Ryan says WHO was working with local authorities to review X-rays and look at the pattern of pneumonia cases to see if they were consistent with COVID-19.
While we believe that many of these cases will be diagnosed as COVID-19, we keep an open mind, says Ryan, noting a WHO team was already in Kazakhstan. (AP)
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Vadodara, Mar 29: A consumer forum in Gujarat's Vadodara district has imposed a fine of Rs 5,000 on a local boutique for causing "mental trauma" to a woman by stitching her garments improperly, due to which she had to wear some other clothes during a wedding event in her family.
The Vadodara District Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission (additional), in its order passed on March 7, noted that the complainant woman had planned to wear the garments during her nephew's wedding.
In its order, the forum said that since these garments - three blouses and two dresses - were not stitched properly, it "must have ruined the excitement and caused mental trauma" to the woman.
"Hence, we order the boutique to pay Rs 5,000 to the complainant for causing mental harassment," it said.
It also ordered the boutique, La Vichitra, to pay Rs 3,000 that the woman had paid towards the stitching charges and Rs 2,000 towards legal costs.
As per the case details, one Deepika Dave of Ahmedabad had visited La Vichitra boutique in October 2017 to get three matching blouse pieces, which she received with three saris she purchased from another shop, stitched.
She also gave another blouse piece and two dresses of her daughter for stitching and paid Rs 5,000 for the stitching work to be done.
When Dave visited the shop again in November 2017 and tried them, she realised that all three blouses were not improperly stitched. Similarly, her daughter's two dresses were also not stitched properly.
When Dave asked the boutique owner to buy new blouse pieces for her and stitch them again with no extra cost, the owner refused, the order said.
The woman then approached the consumer forum and filed a complaint in August 2018. In her plea, Dave said she had purchased three saris in view of the wedding and paid Rs 10,800.
Through her complaint, she sought a compensation of Rs 13,200 claiming that because of the badly-stitched matching blouses, she could not wear those particular saris at the wedding event.
During the hearing, Dave submitted evidence of payment to the shop and also informed the forum that the owner had refunded Rs 2,000 out of Rs 5,000 paid for the stitching job.
As per the order, the opponent, despite getting the notice, neither remained present during the hearing nor challenged the claims made by the complainant through an affidavit.