A top official at the World Health Organization said the U.N. health agency assumes the coronavirus outbreak in North Korea is “getting worse, not better,” despite the secretive country’s recent claims that COVID-19 is slowing there.
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.
The U.S. is headed for “a lot of unnecessary loss of life,” the Biden administration says, if Congress fails to provide billions more dollars to brace for the pandemic’s next wave. Yet the quest for that money is in limbo, the latest victim of election-year gridlock that’s stalled or killed a host of Democratic priorities.
President Joe Biden’s appeal for funds for vaccines, testing and treatments has hit opposition from Republicans, who’ve fused the fight with the precarious politics of immigration. Congress is in recess, and the next steps are uncertain, despite admonitions from White House COVID-19 coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha of damaging consequences from “every day we wait.”
Administration officials say they’re running low on money to stock up on, or even begin to order, the latest vaccines, tests and treatments. Also lacking are funds to reimburse doctors treating uninsured patients and to help poor countries control the pandemic.
House and Senate Democrats have been wrangling over how to resolve the stalemate and even over which chamber should vote first. It’s an open question whether they’ll ever get the GOP votes they’ll need to pull the legislation through the 50-50 Senate, and prospects in the narrowly divided House are unclear as well.
“There is still an urgency to pass a COVID relief package,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said last week. “It’s very, very much needed.”
Optimists hope the measure could start rolling once Congress returns next week. Pessimists say without quick resolution, Democrats may not have enough leverage to push the money to passage until early fall. That’s when they could stuff it into legislation that will probably be needed to finance government — a bill that would avert a federal shutdown, a pre-election distraction Republicans will be desperate to avoid.
The heap of sidelined Democratic initiatives has grown this year, a victim of GOP opposition and rebellions by centrists like Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va. Casualties include bills on voting rights, health care, environment, taxes, gun curbs, abortion rights, policing tactics and an investigation of the 2021 Capitol storming by then-President Donald Trump’s supporters.
While lawmakers have approved massive packages financing federal agencies through September and helping Ukraine counter Russia’s invasion, other priorities are dead or drifting, even as Democrats’ days running Congress are likely dwindling. Republicans are favored to win House control in November’s elections and could grab the Senate as well, and Democrats’ frustration is clear.
“So far it hasn’t moved,” Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, said of Biden’s latest $22.5 billion request for COVID-19, which he initially sent Congress three months ago. “But then neither has sensible gun legislation, neither has voting rights.”
“The 50-50 Senate sucks,” she said.
The COVID money is needed quickly, officials say. Their warnings have come with over 1 million U.S. deaths from the disease and a fresh variant that daily is hospitalizing over 100,000 Americans and killing more than 300. Both numbers are rising.
Officials say that lacking fresh funds, the U.S. is falling behind other countries that are already lining up for supplies needed for fall and winter. That’s prompted Jha to plan for the chance that Congress provides no new money at all, threatening painful choices about what to do if there aren’t enough vaccines or therapeutics for all who need them.
“It would be terrible,” Jha told reporters recently. “I think we would see a lot of unnecessary loss of life if that were to happen.”
Congress has provided $370 billion for purchasing supplies, for research and other public health initiatives to combat the pandemic, according to administration tallies obtained by The Associated Press. Around $14 billion of it was unspent or not committed to contracts as of April 5, the documents show, serious money but an amount the administration says falls below the ultimate need.
Most Republicans are skeptical about added pandemic funding. “I have a hard time believing that there’s not enough money and not enough flexibility already” to use it, said Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D.
Counterintuitively but unsurprisingly for the always perplexing Senate, one intractable puzzle stymying Democrats is immigration.
Senate Republicans are demanding a vote an amending the pandemic legislation with language retaining Trump-era curbs that, citing COVID-19, have made it easier to bar migrants from entering the U.S.
A federal judge has blocked Biden from ending those restrictions. Liberals want Congress to eliminate the clampdown, but moderate Democrats in both chambers facing tough reelections want to vote to retain it.
The result: Testy divisions between the Democrats’ two ideological factions, and knotty questions for party leaders about how to resolve them and push a pandemic package to passage.
Their task is compounded by disputes between House and Senate Democrats over why the COVID-19 battle remains unresolved.
Senate Democrats note a bipartisan $15.6 billion pandemic compromise was on the cusp of House passage in March until that chamber’s progressive Democrats rebelled against spending cuts to pay for it, derailing the money. “We’re waiting for the House to send us something,” Schumer said last week.
House Democrats say even if they do, the biggest hurdle will still be the Senate, where 10 GOP votes will be required to reach that chamber’s usual 60-vote threshold for passage. They note that an April deal between Schumer and Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, for $10 billion in COVID-19 money collapsed after Republicans demanded the immigration vote.
“We want to get COVID-19 done, but the only impediment right now is the United States Senate,” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., told reporters recently.
That’s left Republicans waiting for Democrats’ next move.
“I would imagine at this point way over half of our members will vote against this, no matter what. So the question is what do you do to get it acceptable to 10 or 12” Republican senators, said Sen. Roy Blunt of Missouri, a member of GOP leadership. “And I don’t know.”
Shanghai residents visited the waterfront Bund and ate and drank along streets patrolled by police early Wednesday as people in China’s largest city savored the easing of its severe two-month COVID-19 lockdown.
The lockdown set back the national economy and largely confined millions to their homes, while its ruthless and often chaotic enforcement prompted protests in person and online that are seldom seen under China’s strict authoritarian government.
Full bus and subway service will be restored Wednesday, as will basic rail connections with the rest of China. Still, more than half a million people in the city of 25 million are still under lockdown or in designated control zones because virus cases are still being detected.
The government says all restrictions will be gradually lifted, but local neighborhood committees still wield considerable power to implement sometimes conflicting and arbitrary policies.
That didn’t deter people from gathering outside to eat and drink under the watch of police deployed to discourage large crowds from forming.
Cao Yue, who works in the hard-hit travel industry, said it was a joy to see “many happy people around me on the street.”
Cao said the past two months under lockdown was a depressing experience.
“At the beginning of the lockdown I felt hard in my heart because I didn’t know what to do and it was difficult to buy food at the beginning,” she said. “It was quite depressing to be locked at home and see the whole Shanghai under lockdown.”
Lu Kexin, a high school senior visiting the Bund for the first time since late March, said she went crazy being trapped at home for so long. “I’m very happy, extremely happy, all the way, too happy,” she said.
Schools will partially reopen on a voluntary basis, and shopping malls, supermarkets, convenience stores and drug stores will reopen gradually at no more than 75% of their total capacity. Cinemas and gyms will remain closed.
Health authorities on Wednesday reported just 15 new cases of COVID-19 in Shanghai, down from a record high of around 20,000 daily cases in April. Government officials in recent days appeared ready to accelerate what has been a gradual easing of the lockdown.
A few malls and markets have reopened, and some residents have been given passes allowing them out for a few hours at a time.
The lockdown has prompted an exodus of Chinese and foreign residents, with crowds forming outside the city’s Hongqiao Railway Station, where only some train service had been resumed.
Even while the rest of the world has opened up, China has stuck to its “zero-COVID” strategy requiring lockdowns, mass testing and isolation at centralized facilities of anyone who is infected or has been in contact with someone who has tested positive.
Total Doses Distributed = 747,537,255. Total Doses Administered = 587,360,320. Number of People Receiving 1 or More Doses = 258,586,526. Number of People Fully Vaccinated = 221,292,360.
The World Health Organization’s top monkeypox expert said she doesn’t expect the hundreds of cases reported to date to turn into another pandemic, but acknowledged there are still many unknowns about the disease, including how exactly it’s spreading and whether the suspension of mass smallpox immunization decades ago may somehow be speeding its transmission.
In a public session on Monday, WHO’s Dr. Rosamund Lewis said it was critical to emphasize that the vast majority of cases being seen in dozens of countries globally are in gay, bisexual or men who have sex with men, so that scientists can further study the issue and for populations at risk to take precautions.
“It’s very important to describe this because it appears to be an increase in a mode of transmission that may have been under-recognized in the past,” said Lewis, WHO’s technical lead on monkeypox.
Still, she warned that anyone is at potential risk of the disease, regardless of their sexual orientation. Other experts have pointed out that it may be accidental that the disease was first picked up in gay and bisexual men, saying it could quickly spill over into other groups if it is not curbed. To date, WHO said 23 countries that haven’t previously had monkeypox have reported more than 250 cases.
Lewis said it’s unknown whether monkeypox is being transmitted by sex or just the close contact between people engaging in sexual activity and described the threat to the general population as “low.”
“It is not yet known whether this virus is exploiting a new mode of transmission, but what is clear is that it continues to exploit its well-known mode of transmission, which is close, physical contact,” Lewis said. Monkeypox is known to spread when there is close physical contact with an infected person or their clothing or bedsheets.
She also warned that among the current cases, there is a higher proportion of people with fewer lesions that are more concentrated in the genital region and sometimes nearly impossible to see.
“You may have these lesions for two to four weeks (and) they may not be visible to others, but you may still be infectious,” she said.
Last week, a top adviser to WHO said the outbreak in Europe, U.S., Israel, Australia and beyond was likely linked to sex at two recent raves in Spain and Belgium. That marks a significant departure from the disease’s typical pattern of spread in central and western Africa, where people are mainly infected by animals like wild rodents and primates, and epidemics haven’t spilled across borders.
Most monkeypox patients experience only fever, body aches, chills and fatigue. People with more serious illness may develop a rash and lesions on the face and hands that can spread to other parts of the body. No deaths have been reported in the current outbreak.
WHO’s Lewis also said that while previous cases of monkeypox in central and western Africa have been relatively contained, it was not clear if people could spread monkeypox without symptoms or if the disease might be airborne, like measles or COVID-19.
Monkeypox is related to smallpox, but has milder symptoms. After smallpox was declared eradicated in 1980, countries suspended their mass immunization programs, a move that some experts believe may be helping monkeypox spread, since there is now little widespread immunity to related diseases; smallpox vaccines are also protective against monkeypox.
Lewis said it would be “unfortunate” if monkeypox were able to “exploit the immunity gap” left by smallpox 40 years ago, saying that there was still a window of opportunity to close down the outbreak so that monkeypox would not become entrenched in new regions.
Shoppers returned to the malls of Beijing on Sunday as the Chinese capital relaxed pandemic restrictions after declaring a small but persistent COVID-19 outbreak effectively under control.
A partial reopening of stores and offices in Beijing was welcomed by a weary populace and struggling shopkeepers eager for life to return to normal. Coupled with a gradual easing of restrictions in Shanghai, it signaled that the worst is over in the twin outbreaks in China’s most prominent cities.
The lockdowns and other restrictions under China’s “zero-COVID” strategy have increasingly frustrated residents as they see other countries ease up and re-open their borders. Some have resisted and staged protests at apartment complexes and university dormitories, in an authoritarian country where people think twice about speaking out publicly because of possible repercussions.
Restaurants remain closed in Beijing, except for takeout and delivery, and many people in Shanghai still can only go out with special passes and for a limited time period, even as the number of new cases has plummeted. Officials tend to err on the side of caution under a system that readily punishes them for lax enforcement if outbreaks flare up or come back.
China recorded 293 new cases on Saturday, of which 78 were among people who had arrived from overseas. Shanghai had the most non-imported cases, with 122, and Beijing had 21. That’s in a population of more than 20 million people in both cities.
Beijing allowed public parks, gyms and cinemas to reopen on Sunday, all at 50% of their capacity. A portion of the Great Wall in a rural part of Beijing, about 60 kilometers (40 miles) from downtown, reopens to visitors on Monday.
Xu Hejian, a city spokesperson, said Saturday that sporadic cases are still being found in some districts, but they are within a controllable range. “This round of outbreak has been put under effective control,” he said.
