Kim Jong Un slams officials' response to outbreak

SEOUL • North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said the negligence and laziness of state officials worsened the country's Covid-19 outbreak, state media reported yesterday, as the number of known cases there crossed 1.7 million.

The nuclear-armed country reported its first coronavirus cases last week, and the Omicron variant-fuelled outbreak has since ballooned - marking the failure of a two-year blockade maintained since the start of the pandemic.

Chairing a meeting of the ruling party's Politburo on Tuesday, Mr Kim said there was "immaturity in the state capacity for coping with the crisis" and slammed the "non-positive attitude, slackness and non-activity of state leading officials", the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported.

North Korea recorded 232,880 new cases of "fever" as at Tuesday evening, bringing the total number of cases to 1.72 million, with 62 deaths, KCNA said.

State media reports do not specify how many of the cases and deaths have tested positive for the coronavirus, but experts say the country would struggle to test and diagnose on this scale.

At the Tuesday meeting, Mr Kim promised to "arouse the whole party like an active volcano" to counter the spread of the virus.

The North's leader has put himself front and centre of his country's Covid-19 response, saying the outbreak is causing "great upheaval" nationwide.

Medicines donated by the Kim family were distributed to North Koreans in South Hwanghae province, state media said, in a bid to highlight Mr Kim's personal role in fighting the outbreak.

Nearly 3,000 military medics are taking part in a "24-hour service system to carry out the delivery and supply of medicines", state media said yesterday.

North Korea has one of the world's worst healthcare systems, with poorly equipped hospitals, few intensive care units, and no Covid-19 treatment drugs or mass testing ability, experts say.

But there have been no signs that Mr Kim's regime will reach out to the outside world for aid, according to six international organisations that have in the past provided humanitarian and medical assistance.

However, Pyongyang appears to have sent airplanes to China, its biggest benefactor, in the past few days to pick up medical supplies, NK News and Yonhap News Agency reported. But there are no signs that United Nations agencies which have been in the country for decades, such as the World Health Organisation (WHO) and World Food Programme, are about to resume operations.

The WHO is "deeply concerned at the risk of further spread of Covid-19 in the country particularly because the population is unvaccinated and many have underlying conditions putting them at risk of severe disease and death", the UN body's chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, BLOOMBERG