North Korean leader Kim Jong Un claimed the negligence and laziness of state officials worsened the country's Covid outbreak, state media reported, as the number of known cases crossed 1.7 million.
The country reported its first coronavirus cases last week, and the Omicron variant-fuelled outbreak has since ballooned - marking the failure of a two-year blockade maintained since the start of the pandemic.
Chairing a meeting of the ruling party's Politburo, Kim said there was "immaturity in the state capacity for coping with the crisis" and slammed the "non-positive attitude, slackness and non-activity of state leading officials", the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported.
North Korea recorded 232,880 new cases of "fever" as of Tuesday evening, bringing the total number to 1.72 million with 62 deaths, KCNA said.