North Korea will have more than a million covid cases: Kim mobilized the army

Coronavirus cases continue growing exponentially until beyond a million in North Korea, led by the leader Kim Jong Un | to strongly criticize officials for the slowness in the distribution of drugs and mobilize the army to respond to the increasing case of COVID-19.

The country is trying to contain what it calls a “fever” that has killed dozens of people and infected at least a million in just three days.

North Korean health authorities on Monday reported eight deaths and 392,920 cases of “fever”which brought the number of casualties to 50 people and the sick to more than 1.2 million.

In addition, it represents a strong increase from six deaths and 350,000 confirmed infected on Friday, a day after the official announcement that an unspecified number of people tested positive for omicron variant of coronavirus in the capital, Pyongyang.

Kim admitted that the rapid spread of fever, most likely caused by COVID-19, was the cause a “big uproar” in the countryand outside experts say the actual size of the outbreak is likely be older what the state media reveals.

There are those who suspect the regime has lowered official data to protect Kim’s leadership from criticisms. The country is likely lack of test kits and other tools to identify carriers of the virus that have no symptoms or show a mild picture of the disease, which means that several million people could be infected.

In addition, North Korea never applied any vaccine. The population has no protection against coronavirus.

“When people die, North Korean authorities will say they died due to overwork or natural causes, not on COVID-19,” said Nam Sung-wook, a professor at Korea University in South Korea. you underestimate the number of deaths to protect “the dignity of their supreme leader.”

It’s too late to get vaccinated

Although South Korea and China are close offered to send medical supplies and other assistance, experts say it is too late to vaccinate all 26 million of North residents, noting that realistic help from abroad is a limited number of doses to reduce mortality in high -risk groups, including the elderly and people with pre -existing diseases.

It is also unclear if and when Kim will receive such assistance. In the past, he advocated national unity to protect itself from pandemics without using help from abroad.

State media did not specify how many of the fever cases were confirmed COVID-19 infection, and of the 50 deaths, only one was officially attributed to the coronavirus.

The hermetic country is believed to rely primarily on confinement of those showing symptoms. in hostels.

Failure to suppress the virus can have serious consequences for a country with a broken health system and where, it is believed, the population suffers from malnutrition and chronic poverty.

The North has imposed what it describes as maximum preventive measures already travel between cities is prohibited and counties, and Kim ordered health officials and teachers, among others, to identify people with fever so they could be isolated.

The army

Kim Jong-Un was harshly criticized his country’s response to the pandemic and ordered the Army to assist in the distribution of medicines.

The country’s top leader has “severely criticized” health officials for what he saw as a poor response to epidemic prevention, North Korea’s KCNA and French AFP news agencies reported.

According to the KCNA, Kim reported that “orders were not executed properly and medicines were not delivered to pharmacies” and criticized that pharmacies did not comply with the order of work 24 hours.

The leader ordered the military commission act “to immediately stabilize the supply of medicines in the city of Pyongyang involving the powerful forces of the medical branch of the People’s Army “.

Agencies

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