North Korea .. 6 new deaths from “fever” and the army is spreading in pharmacies

And the official North Korean news agency reported that the army “has urgently deployed its units in all Pyongyang pharmacies and started supplying them with medicines.”

According to the agency, the number of people infected with this “fever” reached, on Monday evening, more than 1,483 thousand and 60 people, of whom 56 died, while 663 thousand and 910 people are still receiving treatment.

This outcome was recorded despite the fact that leader Kim Jong Un ordered a general closure across the country in an attempt to slow the spread of the virus in a country whose population is not vaccinated.

Kim strongly criticized the country’s health authorities for what he considered a failure on their part to respond to the pandemic, especially the failure to keep pharmacies open 24 hours a day, seven days a week to distribute medicines to the population.

On Tuesday, the official news agency said, “urgent measures were taken to immediately correct deviations in the supply of medicines,” including keeping pharmacies in the capital open around the clock.

The health system in North Korea lacks the necessary medicines and necessary equipment, according to experts, and it is considered one of the worst in the world, ranking 193 out of 195, according to an investigation conducted by Johns Hopkins University in the United States.

In the absence of anti-Covid vaccines and the inability to conduct large-scale testing, experts warn that North Korea will have great difficulty in responding to a large-scale outbreak of the virus.

North Korea was one of the first countries to close its borders in January 2020 when the virus emerged. But experts considered it inevitable that the virus would eventually infiltrate it, with the outbreak of the epidemic due to the mutant Omicron in neighboring countries.

North Korea has previously rejected offers from China for anti-Covid vaccines, as well as from the Kovacs platform supervised by the World Health Organization.

And on Tuesday, the official news agency said that efforts are in full swing to educate citizens about the “hidden mutant Omicron, to make them better understand scientific treatment methods and epidemic prevention rules.”

She added that about 11,000 people, including officials, teachers and students in medical colleges, participated, on Monday, in conducting an “intensive medical examination for the entire population” to monitor people with fever.