How Will North Korea Handle Its First Major COVID Outbreak?

[Trollfaz]

So north Korea announced its first COVID outbreak a few days ago and now nearly 200000 people caught the "fever with unexplained causes". North Korea itself has poor medical and anti Covid tools due to persistent sanctions against it. What do you think this will mean for the country and Kim Jong In?

 

[pinball1970]

So north Korea announced its first COVID outbreak a few days ago and now nearly 200000 people caught the "fever with unexplained causes". North Korea itself has poor medical and anti Covid tools due to persistent sanctions against it. What do you think this will mean for the country and Kim Jong In?

There are plus's and minuses here.
Firstly they have made this public which means they may be ready to accept help from the outside.
Being a totalitarian state this means a lockdown means lockdown so outbreaks could be contained.
Down side? What is the current state of play? Cases? Healthcare general? Critical care? Testing? We don't know.
They could have a later variant that spreads very quickly which is bad, or a variant that tends to be upper respiratory than lower which is better, or both.
We can assume 0% vaccination rate which is not good obviously and either scenario people will suffer and die.
We also don't know about things like food and fuel supply services to keep things moving.
Hopefully the west can help, possibly China mediating. China may already supporting be terms of supply chains and vaccines?

 

[Godot_]

...well, it's Omicron. So it'll probably be not-so-catastrophic. Also, I doubt that there are many obese, venerable, and/or type-2-diabetic people in North Korea. At least outside the party elites. {/sarcasm]

Maybe the beloved supreme Mr. Kim might contract CoViD, and, well, he obviously is a high risk patient...
[/sarcasm, again]

Assuming that NK will communicate data, we might get quite some insight into how Omicron-CoViD affects malnourished populations? {/sarcasm, the third]

Sorry for being so bitter. But it'll run its natural way. Let's just say, it's a good thing this only happened now, after SARS-CoV 2 attenuated to the current low-virulence strains - and let's hope it doesn't reacquire more malign characteristics while it's there. If NK accepts vaccines from CoVax, that'd be great, but I doubt Mr. Kim is up to this, I presume in his view it'd be a sign of weakness. Also, even if this were the case, this won't help the current situation, and probably the vaccines would be ... prioritized in a party-compatible way.

Sad, potentially tragic, but there's not much we can do but hoping for the best.

 

[pinball1970]

...well, it's Omicron. So it'll probably be not-so-catastrophic. Also, I doubt that there are many obese, venerable, and/or type-2-diabetic people in North Korea. At least outside the party elites. {/sarcasm]

Maybe the beloved supreme Mr. Kim might contract CoViD, and, well, he obviously is a high risk patient...
[/sarcasm, again]

Assuming that NK will communicate data, we might get quite some insight into how Omicron-CoViD affects malnourished populations? {/sarcasm, the third]

Sorry for being so bitter. But it'll run its natural way. Let's just say, it's a good thing this only happened now, after SARS-CoV 2 attenuated to the current low-virulence strains - and let's hope it doesn't reacquire more malign characteristics while it's there. If NK accepts vaccines from CoVax, that'd be great, but I doubt Mr. Kim is up to this, I presume in his view it'd be a sign of weakness. Also, even if this were the case, this won't help the current situation, and probably the vaccines would be ... prioritized in a party-compatible way.

Sad, potentially tragic, but there's not much we can do but hoping for the best.

Other Countries know what to expect, the ones who have had at least one serious wave with ICU wards approaching saturation.
By support from the outside I should have mentioned training to nursing staff and Drs. South Korea if you recall in 2020 seemed to superior facilities, PPE to the UK at least. The NHS was almost overwhelmed within about 6 weeks from March to June.
North Korea has not had this till now. Staff getting sick, staff putting in ridiculous hours and a disease that has a pathology they have not encountered before.
Passing on that knowledge from the wards is just as important as medicine, vaccines, PPE and experienced staff support if they let us and if that is an option. It should be, it is a humanitarian issue.

 

[Godot_]

[...]
Passing on that knowledge from the wards is just as important as medicine, vaccines, PPE and experienced staff support if they let us and if that is an option. It should be, it is a humanitarian issue.

You might want to take a look at this slideshow.

While nominally there's 13.2 hospital beds per 1k citizens, and 1 doc per 130-ish households, the reality is pretty bleak.

Some quotes:
"County Hospitals: Specialized wards for nutrition and tuberculosis"
"Among children, diarrhea and respiratory illness remain major causes of death, and for newborns low birth weight (est. 31%"
"Continuing widespread reports of death from starvation"
"Malnutrition, hepatitis and TB reported commonly [...] TB drug supply is intermittent, giving rise to drug resistant TB. General collapses of water and sanitation systems"
"Malnutrition a factor in 54% of <5 deaths"
"[Health workers] largely isolated from international trends and protocols"
"Medical students must spend 4-5 hours a day growing food"
"Quality of medical education is poor, almost no defectors can pass South Korean exams"

etc. etc.

It's a horrible tragedy, and yes, it should be a humanitarian issue. But that's already without CoViD. They do have good vaccination programmes, though.

But whatever aid you'd give would probably only reach party cadres and nuclear and rocket scientists... ...the general populace doesn't even get sufficient food.

A tragedy. Good that CoViD only hit that country in it's current, not-so-aggressive form.

Oh, and AFAIK, the beloved glorious Mr. Kim declined CoVax aid offers...