SEOUL (AFP) – Kim Jong Un slammed North Korea’s pandemic response and ordered the army to help distribute medicine, state media said Monday, as the country said 50 people had died since first reporting an outbreak of Covid-19.
More than a million people have been sickened by what Pyongyang is referring to as “fever”, state media said, despite leader Kim ordering nationwide lockdowns in a bid to slow the spread of disease through the unvaccinated population.
In a sign of how serious the situation may be, Kim “strongly criticized” healthcare officials for what he called a botched response to epidemic prevention -- specifically a failure to keep pharmacies open 24/7 to distribute medicine.
He ordered the army to get to work “on immediately stabilizing the supply of medicines in Pyongyang”, the capital, where Omicron was detected last week in North Korea’s first reported cases of Covid-19.
Kim has put himself front and center of North Korea’s disease response, overseeing near-daily emergency Politburo meetings on the outbreak, which he has said is causing “great upheaval” in the country.
The failure to distribute medicine properly was “because officials of the Cabinet and public health sector in charge of the supply have not rolled up their sleeves, not properly recognizing the present crisis,” state media KCNA reported Kim said.
Kim, who visited pharmacies to inspect first hand, “strongly criticized the Cabinet and public health sector for their irresponsible work attitude,” KCNA said.
He also criticized lapses in official legal oversight, flagging “several negative phenomena in the nationwide handling and sale of medicines.”
“While visiting a pharmacy, Kim Jong Un saw with his eyes the shortage of medicines in North Korea,” Cheong Seong-jang, researcher at the Sejong Institute told AFP.
“He may have guessed but the situation may have been more serious than he had expected.”
KCNA said that as of May 15, a total of 50 people had died, with 1,213,550 cases of “fever” and over half a million currently receiving medical treatment.
North Korea had maintained a rigid coronavirus blockade since the pandemic began, but with massive Omicron outbreaks in neighboring countries, experts said it was inevitable Covid would sneak in.
Kim has previously said the country will “actively learn” from China’s pandemic management strategy, according to KCNA.
China -- the world’s only major economy still maintaining a zero-Covid policy -- is battling multiple Omicron outbreaks with lockdowns in some major cities, including financial hub Shanghai, sparking increasing public frustration.