COVID-19: North Korea rejects offer of 3 million China-made jabs, doubts efficacy

North Korea has rejected nearly 3 million doses manufactured by China's Sinovac Biotech vaccine, asking the doses to be diverted to the most vulnerable countries hit hardest by the pandemic and have been reeling due to the vaccine inequality. The communist nation was offered the shipment in recent weeks through the Covax initiative in an effort coordinated by UNICEF. The program is financed mostly by Western governments to help the low-income nations with access to the COVID-19 jabs. In January, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea had reported zero confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 0 fatalities. 

“The DPRK (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) Ministry of Public Health (MOPH) has communicated that the 2.97 million doses being offered to DPR Korea by COVAX may be relocated to severely affected countries in view of the limited global supply of COVID-19 vaccines and recurrent surge in some countries," a UNICEF spokesperson told VOA in an email Tuesday, as cited by news agency ANI. 

The UNICEF spokesperson further added, "MOPH has said it will continue to communicate with the COVAX facility to receive COVID-19 vaccines in the coming months."

WHO’s COVAX facility had earlier this year dispatched nearly 2 million doses of the Oxford manufactured  AstraZeneca (AZ) vaccines to North Korea. But the shots were denied by the DPRK in July over concerns of the rare adverse events of blood clotting among the younger population. In a statement to the Yonhap News agency, the Institute for National Security Strategy (INSS) said that North Korea has been skeptical about the safety and efficacy of the Chinese-made vaccines and much rather would prefer Russia's Sputnik V jabs. 

COVID-19 in North Korea

While North Korea remains in denial of COVID-19 hitting its population, an unnamed "official" source in the North Korean city of Rason, near Russia, had told RFA in March that as many as 6,000 cases and dozens of deaths COVID-related fatalities were registered in North Korea prompting immediate closures. Pyongyang, in fact, has been taking sweeping measures to contain the COVID-19 spread that has also left the economy battered leading to food shortages.  In a separate report, a special rapporteur on human rights in North Korea, Tomas Ojea Quintana told the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva that there was a drastic spike in the numbers of children and elderly begging in the streets of North Korea, as well as deaths by starvation due to the COVID-19.