Tashkent, Uzbekistan (UzDaily.com) -- Online consultations were held between the Agency for Sanitary and Epidemiological Welfare under the Ministry of Health of the Republic of Uzbekistan and experts of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Dunyo reported citing information from the Uzbek Embassy in the USA.

The meeting was attended by CDC Regional Director for Central Asia David Singer, representative of CDC’s head office in Atlanta Ishani Patman, USAID healthcare experts and Kazakhstan virologists. The Uzbek side was attended by Deputy Director of the Agency Bahrom Almatov, head of the reference laboratory of the Research Institute of Virusology Larisa Aliyeva and other epidemiologists, experts on emergency situations in Uzbekistan.

During the consultations, an exchange of views took place on the issues of organizing quarantine control and epidemiological surveillance, conducting tests for COVID-19 and immunological tests, the methodology for their application, identifying and monitoring contacts of infected people, the development of vaccines, the conditions and procedures for lifting quarantine measures, and other measures pandemic response.

The CDC Regional Office has expressed its readiness to assist in countering coronavirus in Uzbekistan by strengthening the capacity of epidemiological services, conducting technical consultations, providing laboratory equipment and other protective equipment.

The parties discussed the possibility of developing a system for modeling and predicting the spread of the virus in Uzbekistan, which allows predicting the dynamics and scale of the outbreak, and calculating when the peak and subsequent decline in the disease will be reached. The parties also discussed the prospects of cooperation on the implementation of the “Point of Entry Program”, developed by the CDC to build capacity in the healthcare sector at border crossings, as well as the creation of an emergency public health emergency response center.

It should be noted that the Center for Disease Control and Prevention is a federal agency of the US Department of Health, established in 1946 with its head office in Atlanta, Georgia. The main mission of the CDC is to control, monitor and prevent infectious and chronic diseases. He has many years of experience in solving global public health problems, including the spread of HIV / AIDS in the 1980s, the outbreak of Ebola, A / H1N1 flu, SARS and other diseases. The organization currently has offices in more than 45 countries.