North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has blasted officials’ negligence and laziness that have worsened the country’s coronavirus outbreak, state media reported on Wednesday, with the number of cases now exceeding 1.7 million.
Chairing a Party meeting on Tuesday, the leader said there was “a lack of maturity in the state’s ability to deal with the crisis” and criticized “the non-positive attitude, softness and inactivity of senior state officials,” the official KCNA news agency reported.
North Korea registered 232,880 new cases of “fever” on Tuesday evening, bringing the total toll to 1.72 million cases and 62 deaths, according to the same source.
At the meeting on Tuesday, Kim Jong Un vowed to “wake up the whole Party like an active volcano” to counter the spread of the virus.
Since the country announced its first case of Covid last Thursday, the leader has taken personal responsibility for the fight against the epidemic, which he says is causing “great upheaval” in the country.
In particular, he ordered a national lockdown, his population not being vaccinated, and deployed the army to help fight the coronavirus.
The army “has urgently deployed its powerful forces to all pharmacies in Pyongyang city and started providing medicine as part of a round-the-clock service,” KCNA said.
The WHO, however, expressed concern on Tuesday about the havoc Omicron can cause on the unvaccinated population of North Korea and reiterated its offer of assistance ranging from vaccines to medical equipment.
For now, the Pyongyang authorities do not seem to have responded to these calls.
Photo released on May 18, 2022 by the North Korean agency Kcna of employees disinfecting a train station in Pyongyang on May 17, 2022, to combat the spread of Covid-19
© KCNA VIA KNS – STR
North Korea’s healthcare system was ranked 193rd out of 195 countries in a study by Johns Hopkins University of the United States last year.
The country’s hospitals are notoriously under-equipped, with few intensive care units.
According to experts, the country has no treatment for Covid-19 and does not have the capacity to massively test its population.
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