North Korea won’t accept aid

With a recorded coronavirus case load nearing two million, next to no vaccines, sparse medical infrastructure and limited ties to the global health community, North Korea, which has long shunned outside help, appears to be on the cusp of a crisis.

While it is too late to stave off the full force of the country’s first wave with a vaccine campaign, there are other provisions that could be donated, from antiviral treatments to protective gear for health workers, that could slow the outbreak and protect the most vulnerable. But it is not clear whether North Korea would accept such offers of help.

Over the past two years, as the pandemic raged around the world, North Korea refused multiple coronavirus vaccine offers. Instead, the country, already hermetic by choice and isolated by sanctions, closed its borders to the world in a bid to maintain a “zero COVID” approach.

The approach failed. Experts warn that the country’s coronavirus death toll could come to top 100,000, with the North Korean population of 25 million providing fertile ground for new variants.

The country’s first confirmed COVID-19 outbreak spread after a massive military parade in Pyongyang in April, the South’s Newsis news agency said on Wednesday, citing lawmakers briefed by the South’s spy agency.

By most accounts, close to entirely unvaccinated, North Korea faces incredible risks from the fast-spreading BA.2 subvariant of Omicron identified in the country.

Joshua Pollack, a senior research associate at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey and co-author of a December paper that called for the immediate supply of pandemic aid to North Korea, said it “appears to be too late for a mass vaccination campaign to soften the blow from Omicron.”

“There’s no good option,” said J. Stephen Morrison, director of the Center on Global Health Policy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “But there are things that can be done that can begin to ameliorate some of the worse consequences if they’re done quickly.”

North Korea’s pattern of rejecting aid — as well as recent, antagonizing missile launches ahead of an upcoming visit to the region by U.S. President Joe Biden — complicates attempts to supply the country.

One of the only countries that North Korea might accept help from is neighbouring China. South Korean media reported this week that flights had resumed between China and North Korea for the first time in two years, probably carrying emergency supplies.

Speaking at a news conference in Geneva on Tuesday, WHO emergency chief Mike Ryan said the body “has no special powers to intervene” and called on neighbouring countries to help.