North Korea has confirmed 15 more deaths and high numbers of fevers as it mobilizes more than a million health and other workers to try to suppress the country’s first COVID-19 outbreak.
Highlights
- North Korea reports 15 more suspected COVID-19 deaths; another 296,180 people with fevers have been tallied.
- North Korea has said a fever has spread across the country “explosively” since late April.
- Experts say North Korea lacks diagnostic kits needed to test large number of suspected patients.
- The outbreak has triggered concern about a humanitarian crisis in North Korea because most of the country’s 26 million people are believed to be unvaccinated against the coronavirus and its public health care system has been in shambles for decades.
- North Korean leader Kim Jong Un described the outbreak as a historically “great upheaval” and called for unity.