Kim Jong Un, leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), slammed his country's response to its first officially confirmed COVID-19 outbreak as "immature," accusing government officials of inadequacies and inertia as fever cases swept the country, state media reported on Wednesday.

The country has reported 232,880 more people with fever symptoms, and six more deaths after the country's first admission of the COVID-19 outbreak last week, bringing the total fever-related patients number to 1.72 million. It did not say how many people had tested positive for COVID-19. 

"The non-positive attitude, slackness and non-activity of state leading officials fully disclosed the vulnerable points and vacuum of our work and resulted in further increasing the complexity and hardships only in the early period of epidemic prevention campaign in which time is the life," Kim said while presiding a politburo meeting of the ruling Workers' Party on Tuesday according to KCNA.

DPRK is one of the two countries that have not started a vaccination campaign against COVID-19, the other one being Eritrea.  

Kim ordered a national-wide lockdown days ago, calling the situation a "gravest state of emergency." The country is now giving "thorough quarantine" to those with "fever and abnormal symptoms," while thoroughly disinfecting working and living areas.

As of Tuesday, Pyongyang reported 62 deaths with fever-symptoms. 

(With input from Reuters)

(Cover: DPRK leader Kim Jong Un presides over a politburo meeting of the ruling Workers' Party, May 17, 2022. /Reuters)