In light of the COVID-19 pandemic's rapid spread in nearby nations including South Korea and China, North Korea has called for stringent quarantine precautions, its state media reported on Monday. Due to the fast growth of omicron subvariants, viral cases spiked during the winter in South, China, and Japan, a report by the state-run Korean Central Television said. "The virus situations in those regions are the most serious in the world," it stated.
China has limited the definition of COVID-19 deaths and will henceforth only account the deaths from pneumonia or respiratory failure, a Chinese health official has said as virus cases surge across the country.
Under the new definition, deaths occurring over pre-existing illnesses are not counted as COVID-19 deaths, said Wang Guiqiang, the head of infectious disease at Peking University’s No. 1 Hospital, reports AP news agency.
As China battles a COVID-19 wave in the wake of regulations being loosened, videos showing hundreds of Chinese gathered in lines outside clinics and hospitals have now gone viral. In various Chinese cities, there is an emergency due to understaffed hospitals and a lack of medicines and ventilators.
A video shared by the UK-based media outlet, the Telegraph, showed a doctor collapsing on the floor while treating patients.
In the latest, Hundreds of people took to the streets in Beijing and Shanghai on Sunday to protest against China's zero-Covid policy in a rare outburst of public anger against the state regime. In connection with this, Tibet has also been suffering under China's stringent zero-Covid policy.
More than 30,000 Covid cases were detected in China, the highest since the beginning of the pandemic.
According to the National Health Bureau, China recorded 31,454 local cases on Wednesday, of which 27,517 were without symptoms.
Before Wednesday’s figures, the highest-ever infections recorded in a single day was 29,390 in mid-April in Shanghai. Residents had to scramble to buy food and restricted access to medical care after it was out under lockdown.