Countries Still not Reporting Any coronavirus cases

The new coronavirus has defied geographical and political boundaries, leaving fewer than two dozen countries on the Earth without a reported case of COVID-19. COVID-19 was first observed late last year in the Chinese city of Wuhan, capital of central Hubei province. The disease quickly spread across the country and beyond its borders, with nearby South Korea among the first to be seriously afflicted by the outbreak. As of Friday, however, rival North Korea, reported it remained unharmed. North Korea, which borders both China and South Korea, was among the first countries in the world to begin closing its borders and establishing other intensive antiepidemic measures to prevent the spread of the new coronavirus. Last week, Pyongyang health officials ordered the release of thousands of quarantined patients said to be cleared of the disease, although hundreds more remain under observation and isolation. North Korea officials announced new measures Friday, including tighter controls on water tanks and reservoirs, thorough disinfection of currency notes and the disposal of waste from vessels docked in territorial waters. Another secretive, tightlycontrolled state in Asia has yet to report any instances of COVID-19 despite bordering a hard-hit nation. Turkmenistan has sent medical and food supplies to neighboring Iran, where cases exceeded 32,000, but has not recorded any infections at home. Turkmenistan has in some ways followed in North Korea’s footsteps, heavily restricting travel, organizing mass clean-ups and awareness campaigns and advertising local remedies with alleged anti-viral qualities. On Friday, the government’s official website reported that the country “is continuing to work on bringing Turkmen citizens back home from abroad because of the challenging situation caused by the spread of the coronavirus.”

COVID-19 also was not detected in the international community’s newest member, South Sudan. The Sub-Saharan country’s civil war ended last month with a unity deal between rival factions but scores of internally displaced persons remain in denselypopulated camps potentially at risk for disease outbreaks such as the new coronavirus. Elsewhere in Africa, the countries of Burundi, Zimbabwe and land-locked Lesotho have also not registered a single COVID-19 case despite all bordering South Africa, which has emerged as the most heavily-impacted on the continent with nearly 1,000 confirmed instances. East Africa’s Burundi and Malawi also have no novel coronavirus disease cases on record, nor does West Africa’s Sierra Leone or the island nations of Comoros and São Tomé and Príncipe. Many of these countries have resorted to drastic lockdown in order to prevent the spread of a disease that threatened to overwhelm the healthcare systems of much larger, wealthier nations across the globe.