Nkorea confirms 1st COVID outbreak

SEOUL, South Korea – North Korea imposed a nationwide lockdown Thursday to control its first acknowledged COVID-19 outbreak after holding for more than two years to a widely doubted claim of a perfect record keeping out the virus that has spread throughout the world.

The outbreak forced leader Kim Jong Un to wear a mask in public, but the scale of transmissions inside North Korea wasn’t immediately known. A failure to slow infections could have serious consequences because the country has a poor health care system and its 26 million people are believed to be mostly unvaccinated.

Some experts say North Korea, by its rare admission of an outbreak, may be seeking outside aid. North Korea’s government has shunned vaccines offered by the U.n.-backed COVAX distribution program.

The official Korean Central News Agency said tests of virus samples collected Sunday from an unspecified number of people with fevers in the capital, Pyongyang, confirmed they were infected with the omicron variant. In response, Kim called for a thorough lockdown of cities and counties and said workplaces should be isolated by units to block the virus from spreading. North Korea, which has maintained strict anti-virus controls at its borders for more than two years, didn’t provide further details about its new lockdown. But an Associated Press photographer on the South Korean side of the border saw dozens of people working in fields or walking on footpaths at a North Korean border town – an indication the lockdown doesn’t require people to stay home, or it exempts farm work. Seoul’s Unification Ministry said South Korea is willing to provide help to North Korea based on humanitarian considerations.