North Korea reports first Covid outbreak
SEOUL: North Korea confirmed its first Covid-19 outbreak yesterday, calling it the “gravest national emergency” and ordering a national lockdown, with state media reporting an Omicron variant had been detected in Pyongyang.
The first public admission of Covid-19 infections highlights the potential for a major crisis in a country that lacks medical resources and has refused international help with vaccinations and kept its borders shut.
Up to March, no cases of Covid-19 have been reported, according to the World Health Organisation, and there is no official record of any North Koreans having been vaccinated.
“The state’s most serious emergency has occurred: A break was made on our emergency epidemic prevention front that had been firmly defended until now,” the official KCNA news agency said.
Samples taken on May 8 from people in Pyongyang who were experiencing fevers showed a sub-variant of the Omicron virus, also known as BA.2, the report said, without specifying case numbers or possible sources of infection.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un convened a meeting yesterday of the Workers’ Party’s powerful politburo, ordering a “strict lockdown” nationwide and the mobilisation of emergency reserve medical supplies.
State television showed Kim attending the politburo meeting wearing a disposable facial mask. In past footage of such meetings or other events, everyone but him wore a mask.
North Korea had never formally confirmed a Covid-19 infection, but South Korea and United States officials had said an outbreak in the isolated country could not be ruled out as it had trade and people-topeople exchanges with China before sealing the border in early 2020.
Kim enforced strict quarantine measures, including intra-province movements, and in July 2020, declared an emergency and three-week lockdown in Kaesong, after a man who defected to the South in 2017 returned to the city showing Covid symptoms.