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SEOUL – North Korea has announced an “explosive” coronavirus outbreak, with six dead and 350,000 infected nationwide since April, a day after the country acknowledged that Covid-19 had finally reached it.
The state media called the outbreak a “public health crisis”, although its full scale remains unclear. North Korea is also one of two countries that have not received coronavirus vaccines, raising fears among experts that it could become the epicenter of new options.
North Korea’s Central News Agency (KCNA) said Friday that nearly 190,000 people remain in quarantine, while 162,000 of the more than 350,000 who have been infected have recovered. The agency said one of the six dead tested positive for coronavirus subunit omicron BA.2.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, who ordered a nationwide blockade following the country’s first official coronavirus infection on Thursday, was quoted as saying by the KCNA that spreading infections were “a serious sign of gaps in our anti-epidemic system.” The authoritarian leader appeared in public with a face mask for the first time on Thursday.
For more than two years, as the pandemic raged around the world, North Korea maintained its infection-free status. But experts say the virus may have spread in the country long before Pyongyang’s official announcement this week.
North Korea’s “zero covid” policy has led to the maintenance of strict quarantine measures and a closed border over the past two years, leading to secondary health and food crises, according to a report by an expert group convened by the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Affairs. research.
“Most North Koreans are chronically malnourished and unvaccinated, there are almost no drugs left in the country, and the health infrastructure is unable to cope with this pandemic,” said Lina Yun, a senior Korean researcher at Human Rights Watch.
Pyongyang has also repeatedly rejected Seoul’s proposals for vaccines and other medical care. Kuon Yang-se, the nominee for the reunification minister of South Korea, said on Thursday that the ministry was ready to “actively seek” aid for North Korea, as the omicron option could worsen the humanitarian crisis there.
Cheong Seong-chang, an analyst at North Korea at the Sejong Institute in Seoul, said the omicron variant would wreak havoc in North Korea within a year. “So far, however, North Korea is not expected to accept coronavirus aid from outside, especially from the Western world,” he said.
Despite the outbreak, North Korea is unlikely to abandon plans to test missiles and nuclear weapons that could be used to boost public morale amid a health crisis, Cheong said.
On Thursday, hours after declaring its first coronavirus outbreak, North Korea fired three short-range ballistic missiles off its east coast, according to the South Korean military.
Seoul’s National Security Service denied the tests in a statement Thursday, saying North Korea had “closed its eyes to the lives and safety of its people and continued its ballistic missile provocations” despite the rapid spread of the virus.
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