People watch a TV screen showing a news report on the COVID-19 outbreak in North Korea, at a train station in Seoul, South Korea, Saturday, May 14, 2022. North Korea reported Saturday. reported 21 new deaths and 174,440 more with fever and symptoms as the country tries to slow the spread of COVID-19 among its unvaccinated population.
Ahn Young-joon / AP
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Ahn Young-joon / AP
People watch a TV screen showing a news report on the COVID-19 outbreak in North Korea, at a train station in Seoul, South Korea, Saturday, May 14, 2022. North Korea reported Saturday. reported 21 new deaths and 174,440 more with fever and symptoms as the country tries to slow the spread of COVID-19 among its unvaccinated population.
Ahn Young-joon / AP
SEOUL, South Korea – North Korea has confirmed 15 more deaths and hundreds of thousands more patients with fever as it mobilizes more than a million medics and other workers to try to contain the COVID-19 outbreak the country’s first, state media reported on Sunday.
After maintaining a widely controversial claim to be coronavirus-free for more than two years, on Thursday, North Korea announced that it had found its first COVID-19 patient since the pandemic began.
It said a fever had spread across the country “explosively” since late April but did not disclose exactly how many COVID-19 cases it had found. Some experts say North Korea lacks the diagnostic kits needed to test a large number of suspected COVID-19 patients.
The other deaths reported on Sunday brought the number of fever deaths reported in the country to 42. South Korea’s official central news agency also reported that another 296,180 people with a fever had been unified. statistics, bringing the total reported to 820,620.
The outbreak has raised fears of a humanitarian crisis in North Korea as the majority of the country’s 26 million people are believed to be unvaccinated against the coronavirus and the public health care system. The country’s currency has been in turmoil for decades. Some experts say North Korea could suffer huge losses if it does not immediately receive shipments of vaccines, medicines and other medical supplies from abroad.
“Without a COVID-19 test kit, North Korea is resorting to checking body temperature to guess the infection,” said analyst Cheong Seong. -Chang at South Korea’s Sejong Institute.
As North Korea’s (suspected) COVID-19 infections are increasing explosively, the death toll is expected to continue to rise, Cheong added.
Since Thursday, North Korea has imposed a nationwide shutdown to combat the virus. That could put further strain on the country’s already fragile economy, which has been hit in recent years by a sharp drop in external trade due to border closures, observers said. related to the pandemic, UN economic sanctions over its nuclear program and its own mismanagement.
During their meeting on Saturday, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un described the outbreak as a “major upheaval” in history and called for unity between the government and people to stabilize the outbreak as much as possible. as fast as possible.
KCNA said on Sunday that more than 1.3 million people had engaged in works to examine and cure the sick and raise public awareness of hygiene. It said everyone with a fever and others with unusual symptoms were being placed in isolation and treated. KCNA said the increased pandemic response included the establishment of more quarantine facilities, urgent transportation of medical supplies to hospitals, and increased disinfection efforts.
“All provinces, cities and counties in the country have been completely locked down and working units, production units and residential units closed from the morning of May 12 and strict inspection and intensive for all people is underway,” KCNA said.
Of those with symptoms, 496,030 have recovered, while as of Saturday 324,4550 are still being treated, KCNA reported, citing the country’s emergency center for epidemic prevention.
State media reported that Kim and other senior North Korean officials were donating their privately stocked drugs to aid the country’s fight against the pandemic. During Saturday’s meeting, Kim expressed optimism that the country can get the outbreak under control, saying most transmissions are occurring in isolated communities and not spreading from the region. to another region.
Despite the outbreak, Mr. Kim ordered officials to proceed with planned economic, construction and other state projects, a hint that the authorities did not ask people to self-isolate. I am home. Hours after admitting a virus outbreak on Thursday, North Korea even fired ballistic missiles into the sea following a recent string of weapons tests.
Kim, along with the highest-ranking delegates, visited the funeral monument set up on Saturday for senior official Yang Hyong Sop, who passed away a day earlier, to express condolences, KCNA said. mourning and meeting the bereaved. A separate dispatch from KCNA said Sunday that officials and workers in the northeast had launched initiatives to prevent an expected spring drought from affecting productivity and crop quality.
South Korea and China have offered to send vaccines, medical supplies and other aid shipments to North Korea, but Pyongyang has not publicly responded to the claims. North Korea had previously rejected millions of doses of a vaccine provided by the United Nations-backed COVAX distribution program amid speculation it was worried about possible side effects of the vaccine or international surveillance requirements related to those injections.
The United States supports international aid efforts but has no plans to share vaccine supplies with North Korea, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said on Thursday. The virus outbreak in North Korea could still be the main topic of discussion when President Joe Biden visits Seoul this weekend for a summit with newly inaugurated South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol.
On Friday, former South Korean spy Park Jie-won wrote on Facebook that he proposed in May 2021 as Director of the then-Washington National Intelligence Service to send 60 million doses of the vaccine. to North Korea as humanitarian aid through COVAX. He said there were then talks at the UN and the Vatican about shipping 60 million doses of the drug to North Korea, but that aid was never implemented because no formal offer was made to North Korea. North Korea.
Park said he hoped North Korea would quickly accept Yoon’s aid offer, though he said he doubted whether North Korea would do so.
