Kim Jong-Un admits a “great disaster” in North Korea after acknowledging that there are cases of Covid

SEOUL.- North Korea reported today 21 deaths and almost 175,000 new patients who had “a fever” in the midst of the first outbreak of the coronavirus in the country that is in the midst of a “major disaster,” according to North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un.

This week, North Korea recognized for the first time the existence of a Covid outbreakimposing a national confinement in the face of the “explosive” expansion of the virus.

Yet there is no sign of a rigorous testing or treatment campaign in the isolated country’s rudimentary health system.

Kim Jong-Un said on Friday that “The highest priority is to block the spread of the virus by actively closing areas and isolating and treating people with fever responsibly.”

“The spread of the malignant epidemic is a great confusion that falls on our country”Kim told an emergency meeting of the ruling Workers’ Party. “But if we don’t lose focus on implementing the epidemic policy and maintain strong organizational and control power based on the unanimous unity of the party and the people and strengthen our battle against the epidemic, we can more than overcome the crisis.” , he added.

North Korea has a limited ability to test, in addition to having one of the worst health systems in the worldso the official coronavirus figures probably represent a fraction of the total cases and could cause thousands of deaths in one of the only two countries that do not have a vaccination campaign, according to experts.

According to Kee Parkof Harvard Medical School, which has worked on health projects in the country, North Korea tests about 1,400 people a week, which is not enough to screen the hundreds of thousands of people with symptoms.

The outbreak could also aggravate a serious food crisisas the national lockdown hampers anti-drought efforts and labor mobilization.

Despite this reality, the North Korean leader assured that he had “faith that we can overcome this vicious infectious disease in the shortest possible time.”

Kim assured that his administration will follow China’s health management examplethe only major world economy that maintains a strategy to eradicate the virus with severe border restrictions, confinements and massive tests.

”We should take lessons from the Communist Party of China and its people’s experiences and fruitful achievements in preventing the virus.Kim said.

After almost two years keeping the virus at bay, China is now experiencing multiple omicron outbreaks leading to new lockdowns in big cities like Shanghaiwhose 25 million inhabitants have been almost totally locked up for weeks.

However, on Friday he offered to help Pyongyang with vaccines, the same thing that Seoul did despite the tensions between the two countries. Previously, North Korea rejected offers of anti-covid vaccines from China, Russia and the World Health Organization.

At the Workers’ Party meeting, it was reported that there were some 280,810 people in treatment and 27 deaths since “a fever of unidentified origin” was registered starting in late April, according to the state news agency KCNA.

State media did not attribute the new deaths directly to covid. Only one death from the variant was confirmed. omicronthe KCNA said on Friday.

AFP and Reuters agencies