North Korea was very proud of having officially escaped Covid-19 so far. But the first case of infection since the start of the pandemic was reported in the country on Thursday (May 12) by state news agency KCNA, calling it a “serious national emergency”.
This first contamination, detected during tests carried out on Sunday in Pyongyang on sick and feverish people, « matches » to the highly transmissible Omicron variant, the agency said.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called during a crisis meeting of the ruling party’s political bureau for containment measures and to bring preventive measures against Covid-19 to a maximum level, with the establishment of a virus control system“extreme emergency”.
II “called on all cities and counties in the country to carefully confine their territories and organize labor and production after isolating each work unit, each production unit and each housing unit from each other”in order to block the spread of « malicious virus »said KCNA.
“The objective is to eliminate the root as soon as possible”said the leader quoted by the agency. “He assured us that, because of the strong political consciousness of the population (…), we will surely overcome the emergency and succeed with the emergency quarantine project”said the news agency.
Strict controls
Kim Jong-un, who said emergency medical supplies would be mobilized, also called for stricter border controls.
The specialized site NK Newsbased in Seoul, citing sources in Pyongyang, reported that areas of the North Korean capital had been locked down for two days, also reporting panic buying.
North Korea, which has a population of some 25 million, conducted 13,259 Covid-19 tests in 2020, all of which came back negative, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). A first case of Covid-19 in North Korea was suspected in July 2020 – a fugitive who passed through South Korea before returning to the North – without being confirmed.
Many foreign experts doubt the veracity of the official figures. But South Korean officials said North Korea likely avoided a huge outbreak, in part because it instituted strict virus controls almost from the start of the pandemic, such as quarantining people with symptoms resembling Covid-19.
Pyongyang also virtually halted cross-border traffic and trade for two years, and reportedly even ordered troops to shoot on sight any intruders crossing its borders.
Covax vaccination program refused by Pyongyang
In January, rail freight traffic between China’s border city of Sinuiju and Dandong was partially reopened, but Beijing announced a halt to trade in April as the country faces a spread of Covid-19 in Dandong itself.
North Korea was one of the last places in the world without an officially recognized case of the virus. Turkmenistan, an equally closed and authoritarian nation in Central Asia, has not reported any cases to the WHO, although its claim is widely doubted by experts.
Pyongyang has so far avoided vaccines offered by the United Nations (UN)-backed Covax distribution program, which imposes international surveillance measures.
Observers say the country’s badly flawed health system would have struggled to weather a massive outbreak, which, combined with other problems, like severe food shortages and an economy already atrophied by decades of mismanagement. and sanctions dictated by the United States, could trigger great instability in the country.