North Korean authorities have ordered a five-day lockdown in Pyongyang from today, following a rise in infections from an unspecified respiratory disease, the specialist media NK News reported on Wednesday.
The decision stipulated that citizens must stay at home until Sunday and continue to report their body temperature to authorities several times a day, according to NK News, which had access to official communications from the North Korean government.
North Korean authorities indicated that such measures were taken due to the “rise” in cases of respiratory illnesses such as the common cold, although they did not mention the covid-19.
At the moment, it is not known if there are other parts of the country subject to the confinement, which is similar to another that took place in May 2022, when the regime recognized the spread of SARS-CoV-2 in the country.
North Korea announced last August that it had completely eradicated the virus from its territory, a claim that has been questioned by many experts due to factors including the state of the country’s health system and lack of vaccines and tests.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un declared “victory” over Covid-19 and ordered the lifting of the most stringent restrictive measures just three months after the country officially discovered its first case of the novel coronavirus.
The regime said that during that period, about 4.7 million people – or 20% of the country’s population – had the disease and more than 20 died, data that does not fit with the evolution of the pandemic in other countries and that leading experts to consider that many of the cases considered suspicious could be typhoid.
Similarly, North Korea’s state television broadcast a documentary on Monday praising the country’s handling of covid-19, an “unprecedented event” that prompted the country to completely close its borders.
Source: DN
