Kim criticizes pandemic response as North Korea outbreak escalates | Health and fitness

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) – North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has criticized officials for slow drug deliveries and ordered his military to respond to the escalating but largely undiagnosed COVID-19 crisis that has caused 1.2 million people with fevers and 50 deaths in the country, media said. Monday official media.

More than 564,860 people are in quarantine due to a fever that has spread rapidly among people in and around the capital, Pyongyang, since late April. Eight more deaths were reported and 392,920 cases of fever were recently detected, North Korea’s emergency anti-virus headquarters said.

State media has not specified how many people have been confirmed to have COVID-19, but North Korea is believed to lack sufficient testing supplies to confirm coronavirus infection in large numbers and is mostly reliant on isolating people who show symptoms in shelters.

Failure to slow the virus could have dire consequences for North Korea, given its crippled health care system, and its 26 million residents believed to be unvaccinated, suffering from malnutrition and other conditions of poverty.

During the ruling party’s Politburo meeting on Sunday, Kim criticized government and health officials over what he described as a failed response to the pandemic, saying drug supplies are not being distributed to pharmacies in time due to their “irresponsible behavior at work” and their lack of organization, the Korean Central News Agency said. North official.

The Politburo issued an emergency order to immediately release government drug reserves and quickly distribute them and open 24-hour pharmacies, but Kim said such steps were not properly implemented. The agency said that Kim had ordered his army’s medical units to participate in the stabilization of medicine supplies in Pyongyang.

After the meeting, Kim and members of the Politburo conducted on-site inspections of pharmacies in an area of ​​Pyongyang, with Kim lamenting that most of the stores were in poor condition and lacking storage places and criticizing some pharmacists for not wearing appropriate white gowns.

North Korea acknowledged the outbreak of COVID-19 for the first time last Thursday, saying that an unspecified number of people had tested positive for the omicron variant. It imposed a lockdown and Kim ordered public health officials, teachers and others to identify people with a fever so they can be isolated.

North Korea’s claim to an exemplary record of keeping the virus at bay for two and a half years has been widely questioned. But overly strict border closures, widespread quarantines, and propaganda that emphasized antiviral controls as a matter of “national presence” may have stopped the widespread outbreak so far.

It is not clear whether North Korea’s urgent messages about the outbreak indicate its willingness to receive outside help.

The country has avoided millions of vaccine doses provided by the UN-backed COVAX distribution programme, likely because it bears international monitoring requirements.

South Korean President Yoon Seok-yeol said in parliament on Monday that the South is ready to send vaccines, medicine, equipment and health workers to the North if it is willing to accept it. South Korean officials say Pyongyang has not yet asked for Seoul’s help.

Inter-Korean relations have deteriorated since 2019 after larger negotiations between the United States and North Korea collapsed due to differences over North Korea’s nuclear arsenal and US-led sanctions.

Kim previously praised China’s pandemic response and urged his officials to learn from it, which may indicate that North Korea is more willing to accept help from its main ally. Chinese officials said last week that Beijing was ready to provide assistance, but they had no information about any such request.

Even as he called for the lockdown of cities and counties to slow the spread of COVID-19, Kim also stressed the need to achieve the country’s economic goals, which likely means huge groups will continue to congregate at agricultural, industrial and construction sites.

While accelerating his missile tests in a brinkmanship aimed at pressuring Washington for economic and security concessions, Kim has been grappling with domestic challenges and an economy traumatized by a pandemic, pushing him into perhaps the most difficult moment in his decade in power.

State media in recent weeks have emphasized agricultural campaigns to protect crops amid drought during the rice growing season, a worrying development in a country suffering from chronic food shortages. Kim is also intent on achieving his stated goals in the five-year national development plan announced in early 2021 after showing extraordinary frankness by acknowledging that his previous economic plans were not successful.