Pyongyang finally converted to vaccination. North Korea will begin vaccinating its population against Covid-19 around November, state media said on Friday. This is the first official announcement of a vaccination program in the country since the start of the pandemic.
The report by the official KCNA agency does not specify the provenance of the vaccines. The regime last year rejected shipments of AstraZeneca vaccines it was to receive under the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Covax program, over concerns about side effects, a think tank says. south korean. The Seoul-based specialist site NK News said Pyongyang may have already received vaccines from its main ally, China.
North Korea, impoverished and isolated since the start of the pandemic, confirmed a spread of the Omicron variant in the capital Pyongyang about four months ago. “Along with responsible administration of the vaccine, we must recommend that all citizens wear a mask from November to protect their own health”, said leader Kim Jong-un, according to the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) in Pyongyang. The country’s health experts believe levels of antibodies acquired during the confirmed Covid surge in May will decline by October, the leader added.
“Fever” rather than “Covid”
In August, Kim Jong-un declared victory over the coronavirus and ordered the lifting of the “maximum emergency epidemic prevention system” country, with officially reported cases falling to zero. In the case reports, North Korea talks about “patients with fever” instead of “patients with Covid”, apparently due to a lack of testing capacity. According to state media, the country has recorded nearly 4.8 million infections and just 74 deaths among its 26 million people, an official death rate of 0.002%.
Experts, including the World Health Organization, have long questioned Pyongyang’s Covid statistics, as well as its claims that the outbreak is under control. North Korea has one of the worst healthcare systems in the world, with poorly equipped hospitals, few intensive care units and no medicine for the treatment of Covid, experts say.