NUR-SULTAN, January 18. /TASS/. The incidence of the coronavirus infection in Kazakhstan over the past month has increased almost 20-fold due to the spread of the Omicron strain, Kazakh Health Minister Azhar Giniyat said at a meeting of the government on Tuesday.

"The incidence over the past month has increased 19.6-fold," she said.

The official also specified that 16 out of 17 Kazakh regions are currently in the red zone in terms of the rates of the spread of the infection, while one region is in the yellow zone.

In all, in Kazakhstan, since the beginning of the pandemic, 1,071,130 coronavirus infections have been confirmed with 973,637 recoveries and 13,087 fatalities. The republic has over 19.1 mln residents.

As of January 18, some 9,072,044 people received the first component of a vaccine, including 8,630,788 who completed the inoculation process.