North Korea reported 21 deaths and almost 175,000 new patients due to “fever” in the midst of the first outbreak of covid-19 in the country, which has ordered a national confinement in the face of the “explosive” expansion of the virus.
According to the official KCNA agency, on Friday they registered 174,440 new cases of fever, 81,430 people cured and 21 deaths. This medium does not specify how many victims had tested positive for the coronavirus.
Experts attribute this lack of definition to the poor testing capacity of North Korea, which this week acknowledged its first cases of coronavirus since the start of the pandemic.
Triggered at the end of April, the outbreak has spread “explosive”, with more than half a million people affected by fever and almost thirty deaths.
“The total number of sick people in the entire country was 524,440, of which 234,630 had fully recovered and 288,810 were receiving treatment. The number of deaths so far is 27,” the KCNA agency said.
With its 25 million inhabitants unvaccinated and a shaky health system, the North Korean power ordered confinement measures throughout the country to try to contain the epidemic outbreak.
Its leader Kim Jong Un said on Friday that “the highest priority is to block the spread of the virus by actively closing off areas and isolating and treating people with fever responsibly.
For the second time this week, Kim called the political bureau into an emergency and acknowledged that the outbreak was causing “major turbulence” in the communist country, KCNA reported.
After two years of self-imposed blockade with the outside world, which sank the economy and trade, North Korea announced on Thursday that several patients with a fever in the capital Pyongyang had tested positive for covid. On Friday, he noted the death of one of them.
State media attribute the deaths to “negligence, including drug overdose, due to lack of knowledge of methods of scientific treatment.
China as an example
In the meeting with the political leadership of the communist regime, Kim discussed “promptly distribute emergency medications” and introduce “scientific tactics and treatment methods for different patients, including those with special characteristics,” KCNA said.
According to this information, the leader assured that he had “faith that we can overcome this malicious infectious disease in the shortest possible time”.
Experts point out that this isolated Asian nation, equipped with nuclear weapons, It has one of the worst healthcare systems in the world.with a lack of medicines and essential equipment.
Even more disconnected from the world during the pandemic, North Korea rejected offers of anticovid vaccines from China, Russia and the World Health Organization.
Kim assured that his administration will follow the example of health management of China, the only major world economy that maintains a strategy of eradication of the virus with severe border restrictions, lockdowns and massive tests.
“We should take lessons from the experiences and fruitful achievements in preventing the virus of the Communist Party of China and its people,” Kim said.
After almost two years keeping the virus at bay, the Asian giant is now experiencing multiple omicron outbreaks that have caused new lockdowns in big cities like Shanghai, whose 25 million inhabitants have been almost totally locked up for weeks.
