North Korea acknowledged on Thursday the first outbreak of Covid-19 in the country since the start of the pandemic, declared by the official media as a “serious national emergency incident”.
The official news agency KCNA said that samples taken from several ill patients with fever in Pyongyang on Sunday were “consistent” with the highly contagious variant Omicron of the coronavirus.
According to this medium, the North Korean leader Kim Jong Un He told an emergency meeting of his political bureau that they would implement a “maximum emergency” coronavirus control system with the aim of “eliminating the root in the shortest possible time.”
“He assured us that due to the high level of political awareness of the population … we will safely overcome the emergency and succeed with the emergency quarantine plan,” the agency added.
kim requested stricter border controls and confinement measures, asking its citizens to “completely contain the spread of the malicious virus by carefully blocking its area in all cities and counties in the country,” it said. KCNA.
All businesses and production activities will be organized so that each unit is “isolated” to avoid contagion, he added.
The impoverished nuclear-armed country self-imposed a foreign blockade in early 2020 to protect yourself from the pandemicwhich has caused economic problems and the paralysis of trade.
Since the start of the pandemic, North Korea had not confirmed a single case of coronavirus.
According to the World Health Organization, the country had carried out 13,259 covid tests by the end of 2020, all of which were negative.
Analysts say that the deficient health system in North Korea would experience difficulties in dealing with a major Covid outbreak.
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