Epidemic
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Two and a half years into the pandemic, Kim Jong-un recognized the first case of the omicron variant before ordering a nationwide “strict lockdown”. A statement that could foreshadow a major health crisis.
A strong image, probably to signify the importance if not the gravity of the moment: for the first time since the start of the pandemic, Kim Jong-un appeared masked on North Korean television on Thursday. That same day, the authorities recognized their first case of contamination with the omicron BA.2 variant detected on Sunday in several feverish people in the capital Pyongyang. Then, after a political bureau of the Workers’ Party which recognized “a very serious emergency”, a “fault” in the “epidemic prevention front”, the leader ordered a “strict containment” national. He called “all cities and counties in the country to carefully lock down their areas and organize work and production after closing every work unit, every production unit and every living unit from each other, so as to perfectly block and flawless spread of the malicious virus,” as reported by the daily newspaper of the North Korean Workers’ Party Rodong Sinmun.
Like Turkmenistan, North Korea had so far reported no Covid cases to the World Health Organization (WHO). This public and dramatized admission could prefigure a major health crisis in a country that lacks resources and medical infrastructure – especially care units…