North Korean leader Kim Jong-un said that his country has been thrown into "great turmoil" due to the recent coronavirus outbreak and has ordered the military to "stabilize" the drug supply in Pyongyang.
The region acknowledged for the first time last week that it had experienced an "explosive" COVID-19 outbreak. Experts have warned that the deadly virus could devastate a country such as North Korea due to its limited medical supplies and no vaccine program.
North Korea's COVID-19 Outbreak
On Sunday, an emergency politburo meeting was held where Kim criticized the "irresponsible" work attitude and organizing the executing ability of the Cabinet and the public health sector. The situation has forced the government to order the distribution of its national medicine reserves.
However, the North Korean leader said that the drugs procured by the state were not reaching people in a timely and accurate manner through pharmacies. Kim then ordered that the "powerful forces" of the army's medical corps be deployed to "immediately stabilize the supply of medicines in Pyongyang City," as per Reuters.
Furthermore, the state news agency KCNA reported that Kim visited pharmacies that were located near the Taedong River in Pyongyang to find out about the supply and sales of drugs. The leader said that the medical establishments were not well-equipped to perform their functions smoothly as there were no adequate drug storage areas other than the showcases and noted that salespeople were not equipped with proper sanitary clothing.
The recent outbreak has already raised the country's total death toll to 27 with 524,440 infections attributed to the rapid spread of fever consistent with COVID-19. The government said that 243,630 people had already recovered and that 280,810 remained in quarantine.
According to The Guardian, however, North Korea did not specify how many of the cases and deaths had been confirmed as actual coronavirus infections. On Friday, the region imposed "maximum preventive measures" in a nationwide lockdown after failing to contain the virus.
Drug Supply in Pyongyang
During the emergency meeting of the ruling Workers Party, Kim said that the spread of the malignant epidemic is a great turmoil to fall on the country since its founding. He noted that as long as the nation continues to focus on implementing epidemic policy and maintains strong organizational power it would be able to overcome the crisis.
North Korea, which is home to roughly 26 million people, has a poorly resourced healthcare system and could struggle to cope with a major outbreak, international health officials said. In a statement, Kee Park of Harvard Medical School said that the region was only testing 1,400 people every week.
Between Friday and Saturday, the nation had reported 15 more deaths and 296,180 new "fever cases," bringing the total death toll to 42. In 2021, foreign diplomats and aid workers fled North Korea en masse due to shortages of goods and "unprecedented" restrictions on daily life, which made it all the more difficult to obtain information from the country other than its official state media and comes as KCNA has been vague and left many questions unanswered, CNN reported.
Related Article:
North Korea: "Explosive" COVID-19 Outbreak Revealed, 350,000 Citizens Likely Infected
