North Korea suspected more covid 19 caseloads near 2 million

Seoul (South Korea)- North Korea reported 262,270 more suspected COVID-19 cases on Thursday, bringing the country’s pandemic caseload closer to 2 million, just a week after acknowledging the outbreak and scrambling to slow infections in its unvaccinated population.

The country is also attempting to keep its fragile economy from deteriorating further. Still, the outbreak could be worse than officially reported due to a lack of virus tests and other healthcare resources. The country may be underreporting deaths to soften the political impact on authoritarian leader Kim Jong Un.

North Korea’s anti-virus headquarters reported a single additional death, raising its toll to 63, which experts have said is abnormally tiny compared to the suspected number of coronavirus infections.

The official Korean Central News Agency said more than 1.98 million people have become sick with a fever since late April. Most are believed to have COVID-19, though only a few omicron variant infections have been confirmed. At least 740,160 people are in quarantine, the news agency reported.

North Korea’s outbreak comes amid a provocative streak of weapons demonstrations, including its first test of an intercontinental ballistic missile in nearly five years in March. Experts don’t believe the COVID-19 outbreak will slow Kim’s brinkmanship aimed at pressuring the United States to accept the idea of the North as nuclear power and negotiating economic and security concessions from a position of strength.

South Korea’s spy agency told lawmakers Thursday that North Korea has nearly completed preparations for a nuclear test, its seventh overall and first since 2017. According to lawmakers who attended the closed-door briefing, all that remains is determining the timing.

According to White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan, there is a “genuine possibility” that North Korea will conduct another ballistic missile test or nuclear test around President Joe Biden’s visit to South Korea and Japan, which begins later this week.

After maintaining a dubious claim that it had kept the virus out of the country for two and a half years, North Korea acknowledged its first COVID-19 infections on May 12 and has described a rapid spread since. Kim has called the outbreak a “great upheaval,” berated officials for letting the virus spread and restricted the movement of people and supplies between cities and regions.

Workers were mobilized to find people with suspected COVID-19 symptoms sent to quarantine — the primary method of curbing the outbreak since North Korea is short of medical supplies and intensive care units that lowered COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths other nations.

State media images showed health workers in hazmat suits guarding Pyongyang’s closed-off streets, disinfecting buildings and roads and delivering food and other supplies to apartment blocks.

Despite the vast numbers of sick people and the efforts to curb the outbreak, state media describe large groups of workers gathering at farms, mining facilities, power stations and construction sites. Experts say North Korea cannot afford a lockdown that would hinder production in an economy already broken by mismanagement, crippling U.S.-led sanctions over Kim’s nuclear weapons ambitions and pandemic border closures.

North Korea also must urgently work to protect its crops from a drought that hit during the crucial rice-planting season — a worrisome development in a country that has long suffered from food insecurity. State media also said that Kim’s trophy construction projects, including building 10,000 new houses in Hwasong, are being “propelled as scheduled.”

“All sectors of the national economy are stepping up the production to the maximum while strictly observing the anti-epidemic steps taken by the party and the state,” Korean Central News Agency reported.

The workplace virus controls include separating workers by job classifications and quarantining worker units at construction sites. In its crucial metal, chemical, electricity and coal industries, KCNA said.

While North Korea says more than 1.2 million people have already recovered, it’s clear officials are simply releasing people from shelters or other quarantine facilities like schools after their fevers subside, according to South Korean lawmaker Ha Tae-Keung, who attributed the information to the spy agency briefing. Although the North may lack medical equipment, it does seem to have enough thermometers to check temperatures, likely imported from China.

Kee Park, a global health specialist at Harvard Medical School who has worked on health care projects in North Korea, said the country’s number of new cases should start to slow because of the strengthened preventive measures.

But it will be challenging for North Korea to provide treatment for the already large number of people with COVID-19. Deaths may approach tens of thousands, considering the size of its caseload, and international assistance would be crucial, Park said.

“The best way to prevent these deaths is to treat with antivirals like Paxlovid,” which would significantly lower the risk of severe disease or death, Park said. “This is much faster and easier to implement than sending ventilators to build ICU capacity.”

Other experts say providing a small number of vaccines for high-risk groups such as the elderly would prevent deaths. However, mass vaccinations would be impossible at this stage for the population of 26 million.

It’s unclear, however, if North Korea would accept outside help. It already shunned vaccines offered by the U.N.-backed COVAX distribution program, and the nation’s leaders have expressed confidence the country can overcome the crisis on its own.

Kim Tae-Hyo, the deputy national security adviser for South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, told reporters that North Korea had ignored offers of help from South Korea and the United States to contain the outbreak.

Experts have said North Korea may be more willing to accept help from China, its main ally. South Korea’s government had said it couldn’t confirm media reports that North Korea flew planes to bring back emergency supplies from China this week.

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