What is known about the 1st outbreak of Covid-19 in North Korea

North Korea’s first outbreak of Covid-19 is the “greatest chaos” that has befallen the country since its founding more than 70 years ago, according to its leader Kim Jong Un, as the isolated and impoverished nation struggles. to contain the spread of a highly transmissible virus that risks causing a major humanitarian crisis.

North Korea reported 21 more deaths and 174,440 new “fever cases” on Friday, according to state-run KCNA media, although it did not specify how many of the deaths and cases were linked to Covid, likely due to extremely testing capacity. country limited.

The rising number of deaths and “fever cases” comes after North Korea said on Thursday it had identified its first case of Covid-19 – an alarming development for a country with one of the most fragile public health systems. in the world and a largely unvaccinated population.

But given the opaque nature of the regime and the country’s isolation from the world, a trend that has only exacerbated since the pandemic, it is extremely difficult to assess the actual situation there.

Foreign diplomats and aid workers had fled North Korea en masse in 2021 due to “unprecedented” shortages of goods and day-to-day restrictions, making it even more impossible to obtain information from the country other than through official state media.

But reports by North Korean state media have been vague, and many important questions remain unanswered, including the country’s vaccination coverage and the impact of the lockdown on the livelihoods of its 25 million people.

Here’s what we know and what we don’t know about the outbreak:

How did the outbreak come about?

North Korean authorities have not announced the cause.

North Korea’s borders have been tightly closed since January 2020 to keep the virus at bay, making the so-called “hermit nation” even more isolated from the world. The country even declined invitations to send teams to compete in the Tokyo and Beijing Olympics, citing the threat of Covid-19.

And as new variants began to emerge, efforts intensified, with cuts to nearly all trade with China — the country’s biggest trading partner and economic guarantor of the Kim regime — with imports from Beijing falling 99% from September to October 2020.

It is still unclear how the virus escaped through the country’s borders, which are tightly closed. When KCNA reported on the first identification of Covid-19 in the country on Thursday, it did not even specify how many infections had been detected. It simply said that samples taken from a group of people who had suffered fevers on May 8 had tested positive for the highly contagious variant of Omicron.

On Friday, KCNA reported that 18,000 new “fever cases” and six deaths were reported on Thursday, including one that tested positive for Omicron’s BA.2 subvariant.

“A fever whose cause could not be identified has spread explosively across the country since late April,” the paper said. “As of now, around 187,800 people are being isolated.”

As of Saturday, KCNA said a total of 524,440 people had reported symptoms of “fever” between late April and May 13. Among them, 280,810 people were still being treated in quarantine, while the rest had recovered.

Can North Korea handle a full-scale outbreak?

An outbreak of Covid-19 could be disastrous for North Korea. The country’s dilapidated health infrastructure and lack of testing equipment are unlikely to be up to the task of treating large numbers of patients with a highly infectious disease.

North Korea’s lack of transparency and reluctance to share information is also a challenge.

North Korea has never formally acknowledged how many died during a devastating famine in the 1990s, which experts suggest killed up to 2 million people. Those who fled the country at the time shared gruesome stories of death and survival in a country in chaos.

“North Korea has such a limited supply of basic medicines that public health officials need to focus on preventive medicine. They would be ill-equipped to deal with any kind of epidemic,” Jean Lee, director of the Hyundai Motor-Korea Foundation Center for Korean History at the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson Center, told the BBC. CNN at the beginning of the pandemic.

Doctors who have defected from the country in recent years often speak of poor working conditions and shortages of everything from medicines to basic health supplies.

Choi Jung-hun, a former doctor in North Korea who fled the country in 2011, said that when he was helping to fight a measles outbreak in 2006 to 2007, North Korea did not have the resources to operate quarantine and isolation facilities. 24 hours a day.

He recalled that after identifying suspected cases, doctors’ manuals said that patients should be transferred to a hospital or quarantine facility for monitoring.

“The problem in North Korea is that the manuals are not followed. When there was not enough food for people in hospitals and quarantine facilities, people would escape to look for food,” Choi said during an interview with the CNN in 2020.

How is North Korea responding so far?

North Korean state media declared the situation a “major national emergency” upon admitting the first officially reported infection.

On Thursday, Kim quarantined all cities and ordered “people with fever or abnormal symptoms”; he also directed the distribution of medical supplies that the government had allegedly stockpiled in the event of a Covid emergency, according to KCNA.

Kim later presided over a meeting of the country’s powerful politburo, which agreed to implement “maximum” emergency anti-epidemic measures. The measures include isolating work units and proactively conducting medical check-ups to find and isolate people with “fever and abnormal symptoms,” KCNA reported on Friday.

“Practical steps are being taken to keep production at a high pace in the main sectors of the national economy and to stabilize people’s lives as much as possible,” KCNA said.

According to KCNA, the politburo criticized the country’s anti-epidemic sector for “carelessness, relaxation, irresponsibility and incompetence”, saying it “failed to respond sensibly” to the increase in Covid-19 cases worldwide, including in neighboring regions. .

A reporter for Chinese state media CGTN uploaded a rare video from Pyongyang on Friday, recounting his experience on the ground.

“As far as we know, not many people in Pyongyang have been vaccinated, and medical and epidemic prevention facilities are in short supply,” reporter Zang Qing said at a Weibo post.

“As the capital is closed, the food I have at home is only enough for a week. We are still awaiting the policy the government will announce next.”

At a meeting held on Saturday, Kim inspected the country’s epidemic emergency measures and medical supplies. He also urged North Korean officials to learn from the “advanced and rich results of the quarantine and the experience they have already gained in the fight against the malicious infectious disease,” according to KCNA.

Check out guidelines from the Ministry of Health in the face of the diagnosis of Covid-19