The state-run Korea Central News Agency (KCNA) said North Korea had documented six deaths from the Chinese coronavirus on Friday amid an “explosive” disease outbreak that infected 18,000 people in the country on Thursday.
“On May 12 alone, nearly 18,000 cases of fever were reported nationwide, and up to 187,800 people have been isolated and treated so far,” KCNA said in an English-language report released May 13.
The article also reported Friday that six people have died from the Chinese coronavirus in North Korea, with at least one of the deaths being related to the omicron variant of the disease.
China’s current coronavirus outbreak in the country began as a “fever of unknown origin” in late April and then spread to an “epidemic” in North Korea, KCNA reported on Friday. The outbreak, which is China’s first coronavirus outbreak officially recognized by Pyongyang, has affected 350,000 people in North Korea, according to KCNA. The news agency said on May 13 that 162,200 people had “completely recovered” from the disease in recent weeks. North Korea’s population is estimated at 24 million.
On March 18, 2022, at the Pyongyang Children’s Store in Pyongyang, employees spray disinfectant and wipe surfaces as part of preventive measures against coronavirus. (KIM NANALO JIN/AFP via Getty Images)
The communist state of North Korea announced its first official cases of Chinese coronavirus on May 12. The event marks the first time Pyongyang has admitted to contracting any disease since triggering a pandemic in March 2020. It has experienced intermittent outbreaks of Chinese coronavirus over the past two years due to the country’s common border with China, where it emerged in the fall or winter of 2019.
In this photo provided by the North Korean government, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un thanked the officers and soldiers who attended the 90th anniversary celebrations of the founding of the Korean People’s Revolutionary Army in North Korea on April 27, 2022. Korea News Service via Korea Central News Agency/AP, file)
North Korea became the first country in the world to close all its borders in January 2020 in the face of the impending Chinese coronavirus pandemic. The move has separated the country from its neighbors China, Russia and South Korea, and appears to have further averted China’s major coronavirus outbreaks in North Korea, albeit officially.
A suspected case of Chinese coronavirus may have emerged in North Korea in August 2020, although the World Health Organization refuses to officially define the infection. The UN public health authority said the patient’s coronavirus diagnosis was “uncertain”.
South Korea Joseon Ilbo The newspaper claimed in July 2020:[t]At the end of last month, the death toll from the coronavirus in North Korea had exceeded 500.
“The number of confirmed cases is only about 40, the other 100 are suspected, but 390,000 have been isolated, so the death toll is rising,” the publication said, citing unnamed sources.
Source: Breitbart
