Faced with skyrocketing COVID-19 cases and a lack of vaccine , North Korea is turning to traditional music , menage remedies , and antibiotics to deal with the computer virus .

Rodong Sinmun , a state - owned newspaper in North Korea , hasreportedlyadvised masses with mild COVID-19 symptoms to process themselves with willow tree or coast banksia   teatime three times a sidereal day . Hot crapulence may ease some symptoms such as tender pharynx , but they   ca n’t be considered an good discourse for COVID-19 .

State media has also encouraged patients to gargle saltwater and take antibiotic to combat the disease , Reutersreports . Since COVID-19 is triggered by a computer virus , not bacterium , taking antibiotics will have no direct impact on the contagion .

Daily newspaper publisher reports have boasted how the armed forces has been deployed to facilitate distribute medication across the country , but it ’s indecipherable what drug these are .

" Pharmaceutical manufacturing plant [ … ] and aesculapian appliances factories across the commonwealth have increased their production by directing efforts to the production of medicines and medical supplies in urgent need in keeping with the maximum emergency epidemic prevention situation , " saysone Rodong Sinmun articleabout North Korea ’s COVID reply .

Kim Jong - un antecedently claimed the country had not recorded a unmarried type of COVID-19 throughout 2020 and 2021   because they took the decision to shut their borders at the start of the pandemic .

country authoritiesonly in public announcedthe first sheath on May 12 , saying the outbreak emerged in April .   However , some remote commentator have suspect COVID-19 causa have been present in the country for some prison term .

document type numbers have risen dramatically in less than a month . As of May 19 , the full number of soul with fever is over 2,241,610 , of which at least 754,810 are under aesculapian care , according toRodong Simnun . The current death toll   is reported as 65 . It ’s mean that North Korea report their COVID-19 cases simply as a " febricity " because the country does n’t have widespread testing .

" It is lively that the authorities acts now to protect the right to wellness of one of the domain ’s populations with grim admission to vaccines and one of its most tenuous wellness systems . That means provide access to vaccines without favouritism and ensure a transparent vaccine statistical distribution plan which is subject to public examination , " Amnesty International ’s East Asia research worker Boram Jang said in astatementlast workweek .

" The North Korean regime should immediately establish program to secure Covid-19 vaccines for its universe by cooperating with the external biotic community , " stay on   Jang .

If the situation fails to answer shortly , many fear the res publica could see a crisis on par with thebrutal shortage in the 1990s .