President Biden said on Saturday that the United States has offered vaccines to North Korea and China to help fight COVID-19 outbreaks, but neither has responded.
“The answer is yes, we have offered vaccines, not only to North Korea but also to China,” Biden said at a joint news conference in Seoul with the South Korean president. “And we are prepared to do it immediately. We have had no response.”
In recent weeks, North Korea has seen an outbreak of hundreds of thousands of cases and dozens of deaths from the virus, according to state media, raising concerns in the international community given North Korea’s limited access to external medicines. and its fragile health care system.
In a joint statement, Biden and South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol said they would work to provide humanitarian aid to the North Koreans, despite tensions between the nations and concerns over Pyongyang’s missile tests.
China also saw a big spike in COVID-19 cases earlier this month. The country has generally imposed a “COVID zero” strategy that includes lockdowns and other restrictive measures in a bid to eliminate the virus that dates back to the original outbreak in Wuhan.
Experts point out that an unvaccinated world population will give the virus more opportunities to mutate and become more contagious or possibly more deadly.
