SEOUL, South Korea (Washington Insider Magazine) -During a conference on Sunday, North Korean commander Kim Jong Un as well as other high officials discussed altering tight anti-epidemic rules, according to state media, while maintaining a widely contested assertion that the nation’s first COVID-19 epidemic is reducing.
According to ABC NEWS, the North’s Politburo meeting signals it will soon loosen a series of stringent restrictions imposed following its admittance of the omicron outbreak earlier this month out of concerns for its economic and food security.
According to the official Korean Central News Agency, Kim and other Politburo officials gave a favorable assessment of the pandemic situation, which is being handled and strengthened across the nation.
Given the current steady anti-epidemic environment, they also looked at how to effectively and rapidly coordinate and enforce anti-epidemic rules and guidelines, according to KCNA.
North Korea confirmed 89,500 new fever cases on Sunday, bringing the total number of fever sufferers in the nation to 3.4 million. There was no mention of any other deaths. The nation’s most recent death toll was 69, putting its mortality rate at 0.002 percent, a figure that no other nation, including wealthy economies, has documented in the war against COVID-19.
Many foreign experts believe North Korea is grossly underreporting its death toll in order to protect Kim’s domestic political position. They claim that because North Korea’s 26 million individuals are mainly unvaccinated against COVID-19 and the country lacks the resources to treat patients in serious condition, many more people should have died. Others believe North Korea may have overstated earlier fever instances in order to tighten its grip on its citizens.
Since admitting the omicron outbreak on May 12, North Korea has only reported the number of cases with feverish symptoms on a daily basis, but not those with COVID-19, presumably due to a scarcity of test kits to confirm high numbers of coronavirus instances.
However, many international health experts believe COVID-19 is responsible for the majority of the recorded fever cases, claiming that North Korean officials would be able to identify the symptoms from fevers produced by other common infectious diseases.
North Korea has been compelled to enforce a statewide curfew, segregate all housing and work divisions from one another, and prohibit movement across regions as a result of the outbreak. The country continues to allow important construction, agricultural, and other industrial activity, but the tightened restrictions have raised concerns about food insecurity and a frail economy already hurt by pandemic-related border closures.
According to some analysts, North Korea would likely claim victory over COVID-19 shortly and attribute it to Kim’s leadership.
According to Yang Un-chul, a South Korean researcher at the private Sejong Institute, the North’s recently increased limitations must be wreaking havoc on the country’s coal, agricultural, and other labor-intensive industries. But, he added, those issues are unlikely to pose a danger to Kim’s rule, as the COVID-19 pandemic and tightened controls have provided him an opportunity to cement his grip on his citizens.