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The coronavirus has been spreading across North Korea “explosively” since late last month, killing six people and leaving 187,800 people in quarantine, the country’s state media reported on Friday. Health officials made the rare admission of an emerging public health crisis after the country reported its first outbreak of the virus — after long insisting it had no infections and refusing outside humanitarian aid to fight any spread. The announcement of fatalities came as the country’s leader, Kim Jong-un, was visiting the national disease-control headquarters on Thursday, the North’s official Korean Central News Agency said. (Sang-Hun, 5/12)

South Korea said it would offer vaccines to help with a nationwide outbreak of Covid-19 in unvaccinated North Korea, the first major outreach to Pyongyang by President Yoon Suk-yeol since taking office this week. (Yoon, 5/13)

The United States has no current plans to share vaccines with North Korea, a spokesperson for the White House National Security Council said on Thursday, after Pyongyang reported its first COVID-19 outbreak. The spokesperson said North Korea had repeatedly refused vaccine donations from the COVAX global vaccine sharing project. (5/12)

The first factory in Africa licensed to produce Covid-19 vaccines for the African market has not received a single order and may shut down that production line within weeks if the situation doesn’t change, according to executives of the company, Aspen Pharmacare. The factory, in the coastal South African city of Gqeberha, formerly known as Port Elizabeth, was celebrated as a solution to the continent’s unequal access to vaccines when it announced a deal to start manufacturing Covid vaccines in November of 2021. (Chutel, 5/13)

The World Health Organization (WHO) said the number of new global COVID-19 cases has continued to decline across the world except for the Americas and Africa. The WHO's pandemic dashboard reports 675,952 new cases worldwide over the last 24 hours. In the U.S., the WHO said there have been more than 156,200 new daily cases. The Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center reports 163,335 new cases and 949 new deaths, as omicron sub-variants continue to spread across the nation. (Musto, 5/12)

Thousands rallied across Croatia Thursday in solidarity with a woman who was denied an abortion despite her fetus having serious health problems, and whose weeks-long ordeal has sparked public outrage. Protests demanding a better public health system and respect of women’s right to choice were held in several cities and towns throughout the predominantly conservative and strongly Catholic nation. (5/12)

A government proposal that could make Spain the first country in Europe to allow workers to take menstrual leave has sparked debate over whether the policy would help or hinder women in the workplace. A leaked draft of new legislation that the Spanish Cabinet is expected to discuss Tuesday proposed giving workers experiencing period pain three days of optional leave a month, with two additional days permitted in exceptional cases. (Kassam and Wilson, 5/12)