North Korea is battling an explosive COVID-19 outbreak. Experts are raising concerns that the virus could devastate a country where few have been vaccinated against the disease, medical supplies are limited and the health system in a dilapidated state.
Dictator Kim Jong Un, ordered the army to get to work “on immediately stabilizing the supply of medicines in Pyongyang”, where officials said the Omicron BA.2 variant was confirmed in at least one death last week.
As of 6pm on May 16, 2022, five days after announcing the outbreak, North Korea had reported a total of 1.48 million cases of ‘fever’, It also announced a further six deaths. It is almost guaranteed that those numbers are but a fraction of the actual totals since the dictator can in his own mind do no wrong.
The North Korean dictator had been offered assistance from South Korea, China, and the World Health Organization (WHO) but all help has been refused. Kim, who considers himself a god like figure, thinks that he is the only one who can help his people. Rather than accept vaccines from abroad, he thinks his nation will find the best cure for COVID.
Kim has said the outbreak is causing “great turmoil” in the country and on Sunday visited pharmacies neat the capital’s Taedong river, state media KCNA reported.
Despite the public health crisis, new satellite imagery indicates North Korea has resumed construction at a long-dormant nuclear reactor and officials in Washington and Seoul have warned that Kim is preparing to conduct another nuclear test.
Analysts have warned Kim could speed up nuclear testing plans to distract the population from the outbreak.