Kim slams negligent officials over spiralling N. Korea Covid outbreak
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said the negligence and laziness of state officials worsened the country's Covid outbreak, state media reported Wednesday, as the number of known cases crossed 1.7 million.
The nuclear-armed country reported its first coronavirus cases last week, and the Omicron variant-fuelled outbreak has since ballooned -- marking the failure of a two-year blockade maintained since the start of the pandemic.
Chairing a meeting of the ruling party's Politburo on Tuesday, Kim said there was "immaturity in the state capacity for coping with the crisis" and slammed the "non-positive attitude, slackness and non-activity of state leading officials", the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported.
North Korea recorded 232,880 new cases of "fever" as of Tuesday evening, bringing the total number to 1.72 million with 62 deaths, KCNA said.
Nearly 3,000 military medics are taking part in a "24-hour service system to carry out the delivery and supply of medicines", state media said Wednesday.
North Korea has one of the world's worst healthcare systems, with poorly equipped hospitals, few intensive care units, and no Covid treatment drugs or mass testing ability, experts say.
