North Korea has, for the first time, admitted its Covid-19 outbreak, with the supreme leader Kim Jong Un saying that the pandemic was the worst disaster to ever impact the nation.
State run media have said that 42 people had died, that 820,620 total cases had been recorded, and that 324,550 had received medical treatment. Given the huge scale of the cases, the deaths from Covid-19 are likely to be vastly higher than what is claimed by the North Korean authorities.
Kim Jong Un told a meeting of the ruling Worker's Party:
"The spread of the malignant epidemic is a great turmoil to fall on our country since the founding."
It is believed that a huge number of North Korean towns and villages are currently under quarantine to avoid the spread of the disease across the isolated nation.
There is widespread suspicion among Western analysts that a vaccine program has not been undertaken in North Korea, leaving the entire population vulnerable to sever illness and death.
A North Korea expert from Leeds University, Aidan Foster-Carter, said of the claim that this is the worst disaster in Korean history:
"That (statement) would include the Korean War, in which four million people died, and the famine in the 1990s where we don't know quite how many died but it was in the hundreds of thousands. He may have a short memory - he's quite young. They say the state is in turmoil. North Korea doesn't do turmoil - I don't think it knows how to do turmoil."
He continued:
"North Korea is one of just two countries in the world - the other bring Eritrea, often called the North Korea of Africa - which hasn't vaccinated anybody, officially, as far as we know. People have been offering - China's been offering, the WHO, South Korea. Half the population is malnourished - comorbidities with things like TB is going to be a problem - I really don't quite know where it goes. I think (Kim) is going to have to ask for help. And I think maybe going public is the first step towards doing that."
[Based on reporting by: Sky News]
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