A top World Health Organization expert has questioned Turkmenistan's assertion that it has no Covid cases, warning the BBC that the virus is likely to be circulating in the nation.

"[It] has been spreading worldwide as a pandemic for almost two years now," said Dr. Catherine Smallwood, a WHO senior emergencies officer. "From the scientific point of view, it's unlikely that the virus is not circulating in Turkmenistan."

Turkmenistan, along with North Korea, is one of just a few countries that claim to have no coronavirus cases. Dr. Smallwood's statements are the WHO's first public challenge to Turkmenistan's assertion, as an increasing number of Covid cases are being reported in the nation on an informal basis.

To develop its worldwide coronavirus statistics, the WHO depends on data given by country governments. Until recently, the organization repeated Turkmenistan's assertion that no Covid-19 instances had been reported in the nation, which drew criticism from independent observers and the media.

When asked if the WHO was now suggesting Turkmenistan was providing false data, Dr. Smallwood said the health organization couldn't "call into question whether a country is acting in the spirit of the International Health Regulations" - a legal framework that defines countries' rights and obligations in global public health crises.

Dr. Smallwood believes it is more necessary to "create a conversation" with regimes such as President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov's than to "make pronouncements that may not lead to the sort of activities that we would want to see."

According to analysts, Turkmenistan's official coronavirus numbers are untrustworthy. One factor was the government's "very oppressive, authoritarian nature," according to Rachel Denber, deputy head of Human Rights Watch's Europe and Central Asia section.

She said that the Turkmen government "has a long history of concealing facts and penalizing anyone who uncovers the truth."