North Korea suggested on Friday that the Covid-19 outbreak began in people who had contact with balloons launched from South Korea.
Activists have been sending balloons across the border for years to distribute hundreds of thousands of propaganda leaflets critical of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
North Korea has criticized South Korean leaders for failing to stop the activists.
World health authorities say the coronavirus is spread by close contacts who inhale airborne droplets, and it is more likely to occur in closed, poorly ventilated spaces than outdoors.
A spokesman for the Southern Unification Ministry told reporters that there was a consensus among South Korean health officials and World Health Organization experts: infections from contact with the coronavirus on the surface of materials are practically impossible.
There is no way the balloons from South Korea could have taken and scattered SARS-CoV-2 in North Korea, he reiterated.
Ties between the two countries remain strained amid a long stalemate in US-led diplomacy to convince North Korea to abandon its nuclear ambitions in exchange for economic and political gains.
North Korean state media reported that the North Korean epidemic prevention center had found outbreaks of infection in the city of Ipho, near the southeastern border with South Korea, and that some residents with fever symptoms had traveled to Pyongyang.
The center said an 18-year-old soldier and a 5-year-old boy had contact with “foreign objects” in the cityin early April, and subsequently tested positive for the Omicron variant.
In what it called an “emergency instruction,” the epidemic prevention center ordered officials to “carefully deal with wind-borne foreign objects and other weather phenomena and balloons” along the inter-Korean border and trace their provenance.
He also stressed that whoever finds “strange objects” must immediately notify the authorities so that they can be removed.
The balloon campaigns largely stopped after the previous South Korean government passed a law criminalizing them, and there were no such public actions in early April.
An activist, who is on trial for past activities, launched balloons with propaganda leaflets across the border in late April. He sent two more times in June, but swapped the usual load of pamphlets for Covid-19-related items like masks and painkillers.
In previous statements on Covid-19, North Korea has also said the virus could spread through snowfall or migratory birds. Pandemic-related restrictions even included strict bans on entering seawater.
Source: Observadora
