Isolated in state facilities

The latest on North Korea's Covid situation, from the Daily NK:

North Korea continues to claim to have had no confirmed cases of COVID-19. However, there are currently over 100,000 North Koreans isolated in state facilities with high fever, breathing problems and other symptoms of COVID-19. 

According to a high-ranking Daily NK source in North Korea on Thursday, around 104,000 suspected cases of COVID-19 were in isolation at state facilities as of early November. These people have been housed in facilities throughout the country, including in South Pyongan Province, the two Hwanghae provinces, North Hamgyong Province, Yanggang Province, Chagang Province, and Nampo.

The Central Emergency Anti-epidemic Headquarters receives weekly statistical reports on the number of admissions, discharges and deaths from the facilities. The headquarters reports these statistics to the leadership on a weekly and quarterly basis. 

So they're not Covid cases because ideologically it's been decided that North Korea can have no Covid cases, but they nevertheless display all the symptoms.

North Korea places people in home quarantine if they display symptoms such as a fever of 37.5 degrees or higher, cough or respiratory distress, and observes them for seven days. If the symptoms persist after seven days, the patients are designated “suspected cases” of COVID-19.

If the patient’s symptoms do not improve during the home quarantine period, the authorities force them into state quarantine facilities. Health authorities provide a “suspected case” diagnosis document to the family, who must submit the document to the patient’s place of employment.

As late as last year, North Koreans could avoid being sent to facilities if they paid a bribe. However, since the Eighth Party Congress in January of this year, the mood has shifted so that suspected cases must unconditionally enter isolation facilities, regardless of their position or rank.

The problem is that patients in quarantine facilities often worsen and die due to the lack of proper treatment and poor conditions in the facilities. 

The facilities are unable to properly serve the patients as they lack adequate winter heating. Facility administrators provide people with thin blankets, but few use them because of lice. 

Most patients use blankets sent by their families or purchased separately from doctors or facility managers, but even this is insufficient in winter when it is so cold that patients must put vinyl coverings over their blankets to sleep.

The meals patients receive twice a day — in the morning and afternoon — are reportedly quite meager as well.

They are, in effect, just isolated in squalid conditions  and left to die.