Seoul, May 18, (dpa/GNA) – North Korea reported on Wednesday that 232,000 cases of people suffering from fever had been registered the day before, as a wave of Covid-19 rips through the country.
Citing the country’s epidemic prevention centre, the national media also reported six further fever-related deaths, taking the total to 62.
According to experts, the country does not have sufficient testing capacities to ascertain whether people are suffering from Covid-19, and therefore reports fevers instead.
According to the report, Tuesday’s numbers take the country’s total fever infections to more than 1.7 million. Of these, more than 1 million have recovered, with around 691,000 people receiving medical care.
North Korea, which is under authoritarian rule and all but sealed off from the rest of the world, only officially confirmed its first cases of Covid-19 last Thursday.
It has been following a zero-Covid strategy for the last two years, after closing its borders early in the pandemic, to prevent the virus from entering the country.
Now, however, the government has imposed a country-wide lockdown, in order to slow the spread of the epidemic, as well as launching information campaigns warning people of the dangers of the Omicron variant, and offering treatment advice and rules for avoiding infection.
North Korean ruler Kim Jong Un, accused high-ranking ministers of not reacting to the outbreak fast enough at a meeting of the politburo, according to state media. He reportedly alleged that their “carelessness and lack of activity” created weaknesses in the epidemic prevention system.
GNA