By Health Analytics Asia

Mongolia, a land that borders China, surprisingly didn’t see even a single COVID-19 fatality since the outbreak of the deadly disease. With barely 31 confirmed cases so far, there are no reports of community transmission as well.

Mongolia’s success in containing the spread of the disease is attributed to its timely adoption of decisive preventative measures. The country, at the beginning of January 2020, when the novel coronavirus was beginning to spread within Chinese borders, made an unprecedented decision to shut nation-wide schools and kindergartens.

Additionally, the country closed its border with China and Russia to stop the inflow and outflow of people and banned air traffic. The country also decided to put all pastoral activities on hold.

The first case of COVID-19 in Mongolia was a French energy company employee who traveled into Mongolia via Russia on March 2. The Mongolian government quickly responded by containing the man and the people he had been in contact with.

Since then, the country has been on alert. It was on April 16, D. Nyamkhuu, Director of National Centre of Communicable Diseases (NCCD) announced one new confirmed case of COVID-19 in Mongolia taking the total number of coronavirus cases to 31.

The latest COVID-19 positive case, a Mongolian national is staying at Amar Hotel in the capital city of Ulaanbaatar under mandatory isolation. The patient had arrived from Russia on April 11 and was tested positive as a result of repeated testing for coronavirus.

In terms of recoveries, five out of 31 active cases of COVID-19 have already recovered. The remaining 26 patients are currently being treated at the NCCD. At the NCCD 245 persons are staying under medical supervision.

Mongolia has conducted more than 5,000 coronavirus tests to date. Nationwide, 1669 people are placed in 21-day mandatory isolation, most of them are people who had returned from abroad. All passengers who arrived to Mongolia on special chartered flights were also screened and put into a 21-day quarantine, as per the government’s decision on containment of COVID-19.

Besides containing coronavirus, Mongolia has also seen a drop in H3N2 flu cases by 90 percent and steep drop in gastrointestinal infections among children.

Meanwhile, the closures that were to last for a month initially, have now been extended to April 30. All classes are now conducted through TV and internet.

The early steps of closure and long quarantine seems to be working well for the country of 3.2 million people.