SEOUL, South Korea (AP) – North Korea said on Saturday it had found nearly 220,000 more people with symptoms of fever, even as leader Kim Jong Un said progress was in slowing the largely undiagnosed spread of COVID-19 among his unvaccinated population and hinted at easing restrictions on viruses to take care of the crumbling economy.
The outbreak has raised concerns about serious tragedies in a poor, isolated country with one of the world’s worst health care systems and a high tolerance for civilian suffering. Experts say North Korea is almost certainly downplaying the true scale of the virus, including a surprisingly small number of deaths, to mitigate the political blow to Kim as he goes through the most difficult time of his decade in power.
About 219,030 North Koreans with fever were identified in 24 hours to 18 hours on Friday, the fifth consecutive increase of about 200,000 a day, according to the North Korean Central News Agency, which attributed the information to the government’s anti-virus headquarters.
North Korea says more than 2.4 million people have become ill and 66 have died since unidentified fever began to spread rapidly in late April, although the country has only identified a handful of such cases as COVID-19. due to lack of consumables for testing. After maintaining a dubious claim for 2 1/2 years that it had completely blocked the virus from entering its territory, the North admitted to omicron infections last week.
Amid a shortage of public health instruments, the North is mobilizing more than a million health workers to find people with fever and isolate them in quarantine facilities. Kim also imposed strict restrictions on travel between cities and mobilized thousands of troops to help transport drugs to pharmacies in the country’s capital, Pyongyang, which was the center of the epidemic.
Speaking at a ruling Politburo meeting on Saturday, Kim insisted the country was beginning to control the outbreak and called for increased vigilance to maintain a “positive trend” in the anti-virus campaign, KCNA said. But Kim also seems to have hinted at easing the pandemic response to alleviate his economic problems by instructing officials to actively change the country’s preventive measures based on the changing virus situation and devise various plans to revive the national economy.
The KCNA said Politburo members had discussed ways to “design and implement more effectively” government anti-virus policies in line with how the virus is being “steadily controlled and reduced”, but the report did not specify what was being discussed.
While imposing alleged “maximum” preventive measures, Kim also stressed that his economic goals still need to be achieved, and state media described large groups of workers who continue to gather at farms, mining facilities, power plants and construction sites.
Experts say Kim cannot afford to bring the country to a standstill that would further shock a fragile economy plagued by decades of mismanagement, crippling US sanctions over its ambitions for nuclear weapons and closing a pandemic border. State media portrayed an urgent boost for agricultural campaigns aimed at protecting crops amid the continuing drought, worrying developments in a country long suffering from food insecurity, and completing large-scale housing and other construction projects that Kim considers crucial to his rule.
The northern newspaper Rodong Sinmun said agricultural workers in South Huanghe Province are seeking “miraculous results” in planting rice to repay Kim, describing how their leader donated his personal medical supplies to help efforts to combat the virus, which the newspaper claims allowed workers to rise “like a phoenix.”
The virus did not prevent Kim from holding and attending important public events for his leadership. State media showed him crying at Saturday’s state funeral of North Korea’s top military official, Hyun Chol Hae, who is believed to have been involved in Kim’s training as a future leader during his father’s reign, Kim Jong Il.
North Korea’s optimistic description of its response to the pandemic contrasts sharply with external fears of dire consequences, including deaths that could reach tens of thousands. Concerns have grown as the country is apparently trying to manage the crisis in isolation, ignoring aid from South Korea and the United States. The South Korean government has said it cannot confirm reports that North Korea has flown in to return emergency supplies from ally China this week.
In recent years, the North has avoided millions of doses of vaccines offered by the UN-supported COVAX distribution program, possibly due to international monitoring requirements attached to these vaccines. The WHO and UNICEF have said North Korea has so far failed to respond to their requests for virus data or aid proposals, and some experts say the North may be willing to accept a certain level of death to gain immunity through infection.
It is possible that at least some of North Korea’s fever cases are from diseases other than COVID-19, such as waterborne diseases, which South Korean intelligence officials say have become a growing problem for the North in recent years due to shortages. of medical supplies.
However, experts say that the explosive rate of spread and the lack of a testing regime in North Korea to detect large numbers of virus carriers in the early stages of infection suggest that the country’s COVID-19 crisis is likely to be worse than represent the figures for fever. They say the death toll in the country will be significantly higher than the official number and that the death toll will rise further in the coming weeks, given the intervals between infections and deaths.
North Korea’s recognition of a COVID-19 outbreak comes amid a series of weapons tests, including the country’s first demonstration of a 2017 intercontinental ballistic missile in March as Kim pushes the edge to pressure the United States to accept the idea of the North. such as nuclear power and negotiating economic and security concessions from a position of power.
The economic challenges and the COVID-19 crisis are unlikely to slow his campaign under pressure. U.S. and South Korean officials said the North could conduct another ballistic missile test or nuclear explosion during or around President Joe Biden’s visits to South Korea and Japan this week.
Nuclear talks between Washington and Pyongyang have stalled for more than three years over disagreements over how to ease the crippling US-led sanctions in exchange for disarmament steps by the North.
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