North Korea Superspreader

North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un held a huge North Korean military parade April 25, 2022 to showcase his military and nuclear might. That event has been identified as a Covid-19 super-spreader event. More than 20,000 soldiers marked in the parade and were part of the  a weapons display. Soldiers who marched in the event tested positive for Covid-19, Radio Free Asia reported.

The country has now topped 1.2 million cases of “fever,” state media KCNA reported May 16, 2022.

State media-released photos showed huge crowds at Pyongyang‘s Kim Il Sung Square unmasked and not socially distanced.

At the time, North Korea still had yet to report a single Covid-19 case since the pandemic began, although experts have expressed doubt over the accuracy of its Covid reporting.

After reporting its first-ever Covid case on May 12, 2022 the country is now experiencing a massive outbreak of a “fever” with at least 1.2 million cases, state media KCNA said on May 16, 2022. The country has not clarified how many of the “fever” cases tested positive for COVID-19. At least 50 people have died and more than half a million people are receiving medical treatment, the outlet added.

The current outbreak is “closely linked to the April 25, parade,” said Hong Min, a researcher at the Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul.

Korean Military Fight Omicron

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.

A huge military parade in North Korea on April 25, 2022 was likely a superspreader event that quickly spread the virus through the county. Send in the tanks.