North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un warned about a coronavirus outbreak as he was watched on TV at a train station in Seoul, South Korea. Photo: AP
North Korea on Saturday reported 21 new deaths and 174,440 cases of people with fever symptoms in the past 24 hours, and aims to curb what it admits as its biggest crisis by Covid-19in a country where the majority of the population has not been vaccinated against the virus.
New deaths and infections, recorded on Friday, rose the official death toll to 27 people and the number of those infected to 524,440, amid the rapid spread of a febrile disease seen in late April in hermetic countries in Asia.
Pyongyang on Saturday facilitated an update of epidemic data after a convocation earlier in the day of an urgent meeting of the national politburo led by the leader, Kim Jong-un, who described the health crisis as “the biggest test since the country was founded“.
According to the balance sheet, published by the KCNA news agency, from the end of April to Friday, 524,440 people suffering from a fever apparently associated with Covid-19 were seen in the country. Of these, 234,630 were cured and 288,810 were treated.
A high school student disinfects his hands before entering school, in Pyongyang. Photo: AP
no vaccination
The Pyongyang regime on Thursday confirmed the first cases of covid since the disease was diagnosed more than two years ago in neighboring China, and declared a “maximum emergency”.
For more than two years, North Korea has insisted it has no recorded infections from the virus, a claim that has been challenged as governments around the world grapple with a virus that has reached almost every corner of the globe.
The country’s authorities discovered the virus after testing a group of people in the capital, where the subvariant omicron BA.2 was identified, which has spread rapidly around the world over the past six months and led the Asian country to declare a “maximum health emergency”.
The situation is disturbing contagious that the detected variant was proven and due to the fact that the country, with small testing capacity, rejected the donation of nearly five million doses of vaccines through the COVAX mechanism, did not put even a single hole and there is currently no national inoculation plan.
At the meeting held this Saturday, the highest decision -making body discussed practical measures “to quickly suppress and control the spread of infectious diseases nationwide” and review its antivirus system as soon as possible, according to in details released by the KCNA.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un presided over his party’s Political Committee meeting on Saturday. Photo: EFE
Strengthen quarantine
Kim, noticing the seriousness of the situation, called for strengthening measures of quarantine to overcome the “crisis”, and ensured that most patients were developing “mild” illness.
The leader of the North Korean regime defended strict boundary closure which his country mandated in 2020, at the outbreak of the pandemic, and called on local authorities to refine their quarantine systems and inform the population of its importance.
Kim blamed the current epidemic situation in the country on the “incompetence” and “irresponsibility” of the organizations that are supposed to manage quarantines, stressing the importance of their analysis of policies applied in other countries and their done.
Experts warn that if the spread of Covid-19 is not controlled, the country could suffer devastating consequences, considering that North Korea has poor health system and most of the 26 million residents here are not vaccinated.
international tension
Contagions may have accelerated after the estimated tens of thousands of civilians and military gathered in a massive parade in Pyongyang on April 25, where Kim was in the middle of the stage and demonstrated the most powerful missiles from his military nuclear program.
The moment the regime chose to make public the discovery of its first covid cases has intrigued analysts, as it took place just a week before United States president Joe Biden, traveled to South Korea.
Pyongyang, which is increasing the record number of missile launches in 2022 after approving a weapons modernization plan last year, Seoul and Washington’s offers to continue the talks were deafeningalthough at the same time Biden had almost no direct reference to North Korea during his tenure.
All eyes were on the message that emerged at the summit between Biden and the new South Korean president, Yoon Suk-yeol, who vowed to be less tolerant of the North, although he said he was willing to talk to Pyongyang about shipping vaccines. .
Source: EFE and AP
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Source: Clarin
