PAVLODAR, Kazakhstan -- Four medical staff members of a hospital in Kazakhstan's northern city of Pavlodar have been detained on suspicion of selling more than 200 forged certificates "confirming" vaccinations against COVID-19.
The website distributing the Central Asian nation's police data revealed on July 15 that a manager of a hospital, a physician, and two nurses are suspected of entering false data into the state registry of vaccinated citizens and selling the fake certificates.
An investigation has been launched into the forgery of state documents, officials said.
Last week, police said that several medical staff at hospitals in Nur-Sultan, the capital, and the country's largest city, Almaty, had been detained on similar charges.
Meanwhile, on July 15, the country recorded its highest daily number of newly registered coronavirus cases, 5,314. A day earlier, the number of registered cases in the tightly controlled former Soviet republic was 4,375.
Most new cases have been registered in Nur-Sultan, Almaty, the central Qaraghandy region, and the southern Shymkent region.
In total, the official number of coronavirus cases in Kazakhstan is 472,106, including 4,816 deaths, but many in the country say the real number may be much higher.
