Manager Kim Jong-Un personally took over the management of the crisis, but vilified the North Korean health authorities for their imparation.
Le Monde with AFP
In two-year excavation with a large part of the world, North Korea is finally faced with an inevitable explosion in the number of cases of COVID-19. Manager Kim Jong-Un castigated the health authorities of his country on Monday, May 16 for their management of the epidemic, who left at least 50 people since his official appearance in the country, and ordered the army to mobilize .
Sign of the severity of the situation, the North Korean leader “strongly criticized the government and the public health sector for their irresponsible attitude,” reported the KCNA state agency. At a meeting of the Politburo, he notably complained that the pharmacies were not opened 24 hours a day. Officials responsible for supplying medication “did not rolve their sleeves and did not properly evaluate the current crisis,” he deplored, according to Kcna.
He ordered the army to get to work “to immediately stabilize the supply of drugs to Pyongyang”, where the first cases of Cavid-19 in North Korea were officially detected last week. Kim Jong-Un took hand personally the fight against the epidemic, which, according to him, causes “great upheavals” in the country, whose population is not vaccinated.
confinements to large
scale
The leader supervises almost quasi-quasi-quota-quoi-quotes of the Politburo, and the North Korean media broadcast photos of him visiting a pharmacy in Pyongyang on Sunday. Despite large-scale confinements, 1,213,550 people were contaminated, 50 died and 564,860 are under medical treatment, according to KCNA, which does not expressly quote COVVI-19 but speaks of “fever”.
The North Korean health system was classified 193
North Korea has been cut off from the world for more than two years to preserve itself from the pandemic. But the experts considered it inevitable that the virus ended up infiltrating the country, given the epidemic outbreaks due to the omicron varying in neighboring countries.
The fact that Kim Jong a vilipe in public his own government reflects the “feeling of crisis” which has taken hold of the regime, estimates Yang Moo-Jin, professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul. “He puts his finger on the general inadequacy of the quarantine system,” says this analyst.
a “zero covid” strategy
According to KCNA, the North Korean leader expressed his intention to draw inspiration from the Chinese strategy of fighting the pandemic. China is one of the last countries in the world to practice a policy of “zero covid” consisting in confining entire cities as soon as the slightest case appears, and to trace and systematically isolate patients.
American president Joe Biden is expected in Seoul at the end of the week to meet his new South Korean counterpart Yoon Suk-Yeol. Pyongyang’s armaments programs and Covid-19 epidemic will probably appear at the head of the agenda of this summit.
Despite the health crisis, new satellite images indicate that North Korea has resumed the construction of a long interrupted nuclear reactor. Washington and Seoul suspect Pyongyang of preparing a nuclear test, which would be the seventh in its history and the first since 2017.
In this context, accepting the help of South Korea against COVVI-19 would hit the ego of the North Korean regime and would force it to refrain from carrying out this nuclear test, explains Cheong Seong-Jang, researcher At Insitut Sejong. “If Kim Jong one is determined to test, he will not accept the help of South Korea,” he said.