North Korea reports first COVID-19 death after ‘explosive’ fever spreads across country – National | The Canadian News

At least one person confirmed with COVID-19 has died in North Korea and hundreds of thousands have shown symptoms of a fever, state media said on Friday, offering clues about the potentially serious scale of the country’s first confirmed outbreak since the pandemic began.

Some 187,800 people are currently being treated in isolation after a fever of unidentified origin has “spread explosively across the country” since late April, the official KCNA news agency reported.

About 350,000 people have shown signs of the fever, including 18,000 who recently reported such symptoms on Tuesday alone, the KCNA said. About 162,200 of them have been treated so far, but he did not specify how many have tested positive for COVID-19.

At least six people who showed symptoms of fever have died, and one of those cases was confirmed to have contracted the Omicron variant of the virus, KCNA said.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un visited the anti-virus command center on Tuesday to check on the situation and responses after declaring the “most serious state emergency” and ordering a nationwide lockdown on Thursday.

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“He criticized that the simultaneous spread of the fever with the capital area as the center shows that there is a vulnerable point in the epidemic prevention system that we have already established,” KCNA said.

Kim highlighted active isolation and treatment of people with fever as a top priority, calling for devising scientific treatment methods and tactics “at lightning speed” and stepping up measures to supply medicine.

In another dispatch, KCNA said health authorities were trying to organize test and treatment systems and strengthen disinfection work.

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Kim Jong Un praises North Korea’s response to COVID

The rapid spread of the virus highlights the potential for a major crisis in a country that lacks medical resources but has refused international help with vaccines and kept its borders closed.

Analysts said the outbreak could threaten to deepen the isolated country’s already dire food situation this year as the lockdown would hamper its “all-out fight” against drought and labor mobilization.

(Reporting by Hyonhee Shin and Josh Smith; Editing by Leslie Adler, Alistair Bell, and David Gregorio)