SEOUL, South Korea (AP) – North Korea said Friday that six people have died and hundreds of thousands more have fallen ill amid an explosive spread of fever across the nation, a day after recognizing the COVID-19 outbreak in degree unvaccinated population for the first time since the beginning of the pandemic.
The true scale of the North Korean coronavirus outbreak is still unclear, as North Korea, which does not have diagnostic kits for COVID-19 and other medical equipment, said it had not found out why the fever had occurred. However, some experts say the outbreak could have serious consequences, as North Korea’s health infrastructure remains broken and many of North Korea’s unvaccinated population is malnourished.
North Korea’s official central news agency said on Friday that more than 350,000 people had been treated for a fever that had “explosively” spread across the country since late April, and that 162,200 had recovered. It says 18,000 people were recently diagnosed with fever on Thursday alone.
It was not immediately clear how many of the cases were COVID-19, as KCNA said the cause of the fever could not be identified.
The KCNA said one of the six dead was confirmed to be infected with the omicron variant. It is currently said that 187,800 people in North Korea are isolated for treatment.
North Korea imposed a nationwide blockade on Thursday to control its first recognized outbreak of COVID-19 after maintaining a widely dubious claim for more than two years that it has completely repelled the virus, which has spread to almost every place in the world. .
State media reported that tests of virus samples collected on Sunday from an unspecified number of people with fever in the capital, Pyongyang, confirmed that they were infected with the omicron variant. The reports do not specify the number of cases.
Experts say the failure to delay coronavirus infections could have serious consequences, as the country has a poor health system and its 26 million people are thought to be largely unvaccinated.
KCNA said Kim was informed of the fever during a visit to the state headquarters for emergency epidemic prevention on Thursday and criticized officials for failing to prevent a “vulnerability in the epidemic prevention system”.
He said the spread of the fever was concentrated around the capital Pyongyang and nearby areas, and stressed the importance of isolating all work, production and housing units from each other, while providing residents with every opportunity to limit the spread of the “malicious virus”.
“The most important challenge and ultimate task for our party is to reverse the immediate public health crisis at an early stage, restore the stability of epidemic prevention and protect the health and well-being of our people,” Kim was quoted as saying by KCNA.
Describing its anti-coronavirus campaign as a matter of “national existence”, North Korea has severely curtailed cross-border traffic and trade over the past two years and is even believed to have ordered troops to fire at sight of any intruders crossing its borders.
Border closures have further damaged the economy, which has been damaged by decades of mismanagement and crippling US-led sanctions over its nuclear weapons and missile program, pushing Kim to perhaps the most difficult moment of his rule since taking office in 2011. .
North Korea initially reopened rail freight traffic between its border town of Sinuju and China’s Dandong in January, but China announced a halt to trade last month as it handled the spread of COVID-19 in its border areas.
Hours after North Korea confirmed the outbreak on Thursday, North Korea fired three short-range ballistic missiles into the sea, South Korea and Japan said, a show of force after leader Kim Jong Un publicly acknowledged the outbreak.
It was the 16th round of missile launches by the North this year as it pushes the edge to force the United States to accept North Korea as a nuclear power and negotiate easing sanctions and other concessions from a position of strength. .
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