North Korean leader Kim Jong Un ordered a nationwide lockdown after confirming the first outbreak of covid-19 in its territory since the start of the pandemic, state media reported on Thursday.
Kim “called on all cities and municipalities in the country to carefully confine their areas,” state news agency KCNA said. Factories, businesses and homes must be closed and reorganized to “seamlessly block the spread of the malicious virus,” it added.
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According to the agency, Kim “assured 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.”
It was not clear how many infections North Korea has detected, with opaque communication.
“For Pyongyang to publicly admit omicron cases, the public health situation must be serious,” said Professor Leif-Eric Easley of Ewha University in Seoul.
“Pyongyang is likely to stick with lockdowns, even though the failure of China’s zero-Covid strategy suggests this approach doesn’t work with the omicron variant,” he added.
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Country in ‘maximum emergency’
North Korean media today reported the first contagion of the omicron variant of the coronavirus, which has led to declaring a state of “maximum emergency” in a country that has not announced any vaccination plan and has not reported a single vaccine to the World Health Organization (WHO).
Local authorities detected that the samples of people tested last Sunday in Pyongyang who had a fever are consistent with the omicron variant, according to the state news agency KCNA.
The regime, which until now had not confirmed a single positive for covid, has made the announcement after various foreign media stated, citing local sources, that a confinement had been decreed in the North Korean capital last Monday.
KCNA detailed that the politburo of the North Korean Workers’ Party held a meeting today chaired by leader Kim Jong-un in which “the challenge of managing the health crisis was discussed.”
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Kim himself adopted a resolution to implement the “maximum emergency” in the country, which has been closed since 2020 to try to prevent the virus from entering.
“The Politburo criticized the carelessness, laxity, irresponsibility and incompetence of those responsible for the quarantine system, who have failed to respond correctly to the growing volume of virus mutation infections worldwide, including in areas surrounding our country,” KCNA added.
North Korea has maintained a very strict plan that includes preventing anyone from entering the country from abroad, reinforce border fences, shoot anyone who approaches the divide or thoroughly disinfect the imports it gets from China.
The regime has refused to accept two shipments of the vaccine manufactured by AstraZeneca and Sinovac under the COVAX program and it is, together with Eritrea, the only country in the world that has not reported a single inoculation to the WHO.
The lack of immunization and the strict controls that the regime activates in cases of health emergency are of great concern to humanitarian organizations due to the effects, both on a health and food level, that these strategies may have on the North Korean population.
AFP and EFE
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