Kim Jong-un announced the incarceration in a presentation where he was seen wearing a mask. Photo: AP
North Korea confirmed on Thursday its first cases of COVID-19 since the pandemic started and the “maximum emergency” was declared, a situation that is worrying due to how contagious the Omicron variant has proven to be and the fact that the separate country he was not given a vaccine and it does not yet have an inoculation plan.
The seriousness with which the regime accepts the situation can be seen in the fact that the country’s top leader, Kim Jong-un, appeared with a chinstrap during the announcement of a health emergency, and he just released it to talk.
Authorities determined that samples taken on May 8 from people with fever were “owned by an organization in the capital” corresponds to the Omicron BA variant.2which has spread around the world since the end of 2021.
A woman disinfects a water bottling plant in Pyongyang. North Korea lockeddown for the “first” outbreak of COVID. Photo: AFP.
The KCNA agency, in part, reported “a gap” in the epidemic prevention system that the country has “firmly defended for two years and three months since February 2020.”
North Korean media did not offer more specific details or mention possible routes of infection.
The regime, which so far has not been confirmed positive for COVID, announced after specialized media such as NK News, citing local sources, said that on May 10 it had suddenly ordered detention in Pyongyang.
For its part, the South Korean Ministry of Unification explained in a letter sent to EFE that its position involves cooperation “on a humane level at all times” on health issues in the North and its residents.
Concerned about the situation in the struggling country, the North Korean army responded Thursday with an apparent act of force by launching three missiles in the Sea of Japan (called the East Sea in two Koreas), qualifies as ballistic and short-range of the South, in the third in such a test last week and the sixteenth so far in 2022.
Kim Jong-un took off his mask just to speak in his presentation. Photo: AFP
Kin Jong-un is wearing a chinstrap
The North Korean Workers’ Party’s political party held a meeting on Thursday chaired by leader Kim Jong-un-who He appeared holding a chinstrap and only removed it when speakingas seen on television– to activate a “maximum emergency epidemic prevention system”
“Kim urges all cities and counties across the country to completely lock their areas” to prevent further infection.
The leader stressed the need for the health system to conduct intensive testing, strengthen observation and medical treatment and intensify disinfection, in which he said medical supplies have been “reserved so far for a long-term situation. emergency “will be mobilized.
North Korea has maintained a very strict system since 2020 including preventing anyone from entering the country, strengthen border fences, shoot anyone who approaches the divide or disinfect for several weeks the imports it gets from China by sea or rail.
In fact, freight trains rotating between China and North Korea and for almost all of 2020 and 2021 was detained at the behest of Pyongyang They have recently been held again due to the escalation of cases in neighboring countries.
A health worker offers disinfectant to a schoolgirl in Pyongyang. Photo: AP
Amid all that paraphernalia, the regime originally reported a case of COVID-19 in July 2020 from a North Korean defector who returned to his home country from South Korea, but it later told the World Health Organization (WHO) and test results are “uncertain”.
Vaccine denial
The regime has refused to accept two vaccine shipments made by AstraZeneca and Sinovac through the COVAX mechanism and, along with Eritrea, is the only country that did not report a single inoculation to the WHO.
Apparently this was due to the regime’s refusal to allow foreign personnel to enter the country to help prepare the necessary cold chains to distribute and store vaccines, a requirement of COVAX to deliver almost 5 million doses rejected by Pyongyang.
In 2021, Pyongyang rejected an offer of nearly 3 million Sinovac vaccines from Beijing. Russian officials also said it had rejected their offers of the Sputnik vaccine.
The meeting chaired by Kim Jong-un where the detention in North Korea was announced. Photo: REUTERS
According to the Institute for National Security Strategies, a thinktank South Korean, the reason for the decline is because the regime do not trust the effectiveness of the Chinese vaccine, and he was worried about the effects of the British.
A March report of the Center for Strategic International Studies, a thinktank US, suggested that North Korea would actually be open to the possibility of receive vaccines made using mRNA technologyas in Pfizer and Moderna.
Other experts believe that North Korea has been able to deny them so that the country, which makes independence paramountdo not rely on any external actor.
Also, that the vaccine it is trying to develop is from either “reverse engineering” conducted on samples obtained from China and Russia or from information obtained in computer attacks about labs.
The lack of vaccination and the tight controls that the regime can activate are concerned about the effects they could have on the North Korean population at the health, psychological, economic and nutritional levels.
lack of logistics
The politburo said Thursday that “the inconveniences and the suffering that people will suffer under a strict closure situation” should be reduced, but the message has raised doubts because of how contagious Omicron is and the value of an approach such as “COVID zero”. “Chinese in a country without logistical resources for such a plan.
It should also be noted that North Korea, which has just opened its main annual rice planting window, has admitted to experiencing food shortages during the pandemic associated with –apart from the closure of the border– due to the droughts and typhoons it suffered.
In this regard, the lack of intensive care units or medical equipment along with testing capacity seems to be minimal (as of March Pyongyang tested only 64,207 people0.5% of its population) could cause a health disaster if the virus is widespread.
Source: EFE
Source: Clarin
