The corona pandemic is now hitting North Korea with all its might. A few days after the first official case, there have been at least 50 “fever-related deaths” in Kim Jong Un’s kingdom. It is unclear how many cases there really are.
A few days after the first corona infections were confirmed in North Korea, the number of fever-related deaths in the country has risen to 50, according to official figures. By Sunday evening (local time), the number of patients with fever symptoms had risen to more than 1.2 million, the state media reported on Monday, citing the emergency center for epidemic prevention. More than half of them have recovered. The isolated and authoritarian country also avoided calling the disease by its name. Instead, the talk continued about the “spreading of the epidemic”.
At a new emergency meeting of the ruling Labor Party’s Politburo, leader Kim Jong Un reportedly ordered the military to help distribute medicines. The use should therefore initially be limited to the capital Pyongyang.
Kim had reprimanded the responsible authorities for not ensuring an adequate supply of medical resources so far, it said. Among other things, he found out what antipyretics and antibiotics the city’s pharmacies had in stock and whether they were open around the clock.
How many of the reported fever cases are actually due to corona disease remained unclear. Experts suspect that North Korea does not have the capacity to conduct mass testing. North Korea officially confirmed infections with the pathogen last Thursday for the first time since the outbreak of the corona pandemic more than two years ago. The country had long claimed to be corona-free. However, the information was met with skepticism abroad.
Also read: Brazen, right in the face: How I was constantly lied to in North Korea for seven days
