At a press briefing on Wednesday, WHO’s emergencies chief
Dr. Mike Ryan appealed to North Korean authorities for more information about
the COVID-19 outbreak there, saying “we have real issues in getting access to
the raw data and to the actual situation on the ground.” He said WHO has not
received any privileged information about the epidemic - unlike in typical
outbreaks when countries may share more sensitive data with the organization so
it can evaluate the public health risks for the global community.
“It is very, very difficult to provide a proper analysis to
the world when we don’t have access to the necessary data,” he said. WHO has
previously voiced concerns about the impact of COVID-19 in North Korea’s
population, which is believed to be largely unvaccinated and whose fragile
health systems could struggle to deal with a surge of cases prompted by the
super-infectious omicron and its subvariants.
Ryan said WHO had offered technical assistance and supplies
to North Korean officials multiple times, including offering COVID-19 vaccines
on at least three separate occasions.
Last week, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and other top
officials discussed revising stringent anti-epidemic restrictions, state media
reported, as they maintained a widely disputed claim that the country’s first
COVID-19 outbreak is slowing.
The discussion at the North’s Politburo meeting on Sunday
suggested it would soon relax a set of draconian curbs imposed after its
admission of the omicron outbreak this month out of concern about its food and
economic situations.
North Korea’s claims to have controlled COVID-19 without
widespread vaccination, lockdowns or drugs have been met with widespread
disbelief, particularly its insistence that only dozens have died among many
millions infected - a far lower death rate than seen anywhere else in the
world.
The North Korean government has said there are about 3.7
million people with fever or suspected COVID-19. But it disclosed few details
about the severity of illness or how many people have recovered, frustrating
public health experts’ attempt to understand the extent of the outbreak.
“We really would appeal for for a more open approach so we
can come to the assistance of the people of (North Korea), because right now we
are not in a position to make an adequate risk assessment of the situation on
the ground,” Ryan said. He said WHO was working with neighboring countries like
China and South Korea to ascertain more about what might be happening in North
Korea, saying that the epidemic there could potentially have global
implications.
WHO’s criticism of North Korea’s failure to provide more
information about its COVID-19 outbreak stands in contrast to the U.N. health
agency’s failure to publicly fault China in the early days of the coronavirus
pandemic.
In early 2020, WHO’s chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus
repeatedly praised China publicly for its speedy response to the emergence of
the coronavirus, even as WHO scientists privately grumbled about China’sdelayed information-sharing and stalled sharing the genetic sequence of
COVID-19. -AP