50 Corona dead in North Korea – Kim berates authorities for “irresponsible hiring”
The pharmacies are only full for the leader: the North Korean health system is one of the worst in the world
Source: dpa/-
The pandemic overwhelmed the impoverished country in just days. Even leader Kim Jong Un is now choosing dramatic words and ordering a full lockdown. Now the army is supposed to step in to provide health care – because according to Kim, the authorities have failed.
OA few days after the first corona infections were confirmed in North Korea, the number of fever-related deaths in the country rose to 50, according to official figures. As of Sunday evening (local time), the number of patients with symptoms of fever had risen to more than 1.2 million, state media reported Monday, citing the Emergency Center for Epidemic Prevention. More than half of them have recovered. The isolated and authoritarian country has also avoided calling the disease by name. Instead, people kept talking about the “spread of the epidemic”.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has sharply criticized his health authorities’ handling of the pandemic. According to a report by the official KCNA news agency on Monday, Kim complained at a Politburo meeting of the ruling Workers’ Party that pharmacies are not being stocked with medicines on time, which is due to a ” irresponsible attitude towards work” and a lack of organization on the part of managers. The reaction to the outbreak has been clumsy.
In the isolated country, the corona situation is apparently getting dramatically worse. Kim ordered the army to “immediately stabilize” the drug supply in the capital Pyongyang, the official KCNA news agency reported on Monday.
North Korea announced on Thursday that the highly contagious omicron variant had been discovered in Pyongyang. Kim said the outbreak had caused “major unrest” in the country. A “total lockdown” has been ordered for all provinces and cities, according to KCNA. Despite drastic measures, North Korea is reporting high numbers of new cases in the unvaccinated population every day.
On Monday, state media reported eight new deaths and hundreds of thousands more cases with symptoms of fever, citing a relevant authority. Since the start of the epidemic at the end of April, more than 1.2 million people have fallen ill and around 564,860 are currently in quarantine.
With the eight new deaths in 24 hours as of Sunday evening (local time), the death toll has so far risen to 50. It is unclear how many of the so-called fevers and deaths may be due to Covid- 19.
If North Korea does not quickly bring the outbreak under control, experts believe the country will face serious consequences. The health system is considered rudimentary, the population as almost unvaccinated and the nutritional status of the 26 million inhabitants as mediocre.
Pyongyang’s leaders have so far resisted accepting vaccines offered by the UN’s Covax supply programme. Such a step would involve international controls.