A “extreme emergency” control system will be put in place, while a first contamination with an omicron variant was detected in the capital Pyongyang.
Le Monde
Pyongyang fed a great pride in having officially escaped, until then, at COVID-19. But the first case of infection since the start of the pandemic was reported in North Korea, Thursday, May 12, by the official state agency KCNA, qualifying this “serious national emergency”.
This first contamination, detected during tests carried out Sunday in Pyongyang on sick and feverish people, “corresponds” to the highly transmitted omicron variant, said the agency.
The North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called, during a crisis meeting of the political bureau, to bring preventive measures against the COVVI-19 to a maximum level with the implementation of a system of Control of the “extreme emergency” virus.
“The objective is to eliminate the root as soon as possible,” said the leader quoted by the agency. “He assured us that because of the strong political conscience of the population […], we will surely overcome the urgency and will succeed with the quarantine emergency project,” said the news agency.
strict controls
Kim Jong-un, who said that emergency medical reserves would be mobilized, asked for more strict border control as well as containment measures, asking residents “to completely prevent the propagation of the malicious virus as Completely blocking their districts in all cities and all the counties in the country, “according to KCNA. All productive and commercial activities will be organized so that each work unit is “isolated” to avoid the spread of the virus, he added.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), North Korea, which has some 26 million inhabitants, led 13,250 anti-Cavid-19 tests in 2020, which all proved to be negative. A first case of Covid-19 in North Korea had been suspected in July 2020- a fugitive spent in South Korea before returning to the North- without being confirmed.
Many foreign experts doubt the veracity of official figures. But South Korean officials said that North Korea has probably avoided a huge epidemic, in part because it had instituted strict viruse controls almost from the start of the pandemic, such as the quarantine of people with Symptoms resembling COVID-19.
Pyongyang had also practically interrupted traffic and cross -border trade for two years, and would even have ordered the troops to shoot all the intruders that crossed its borders.
The Covax vaccination program refused by Pyongyang
Last January, rail freight traffic between the border town of Sinuiju and that of China, Dandong, had been partially reopened, but China announced the cessation of trade last month, while it was facing To a propagation of the COVID-19 in DANDONG.
North Korea was one of the last places in the world without an officially recognized case of virus. Turkmenistan, an equally closed and authoritarian nation of Central Asia, has not pointed out to the WHO, although its assertion is largely questioned by experts.
Until now, North Korea has avoided the vaccines proposed by the Covax distribution program supported by the United Nations (UN) which imposes international surveillance measures.
Observers believe that the country’s health system, very deficient, should have trouble overcoming a large -scale epidemic which, combined with other problems such as serious food shortages and an economy already atrophied by decades of bad Management and sanctions dictated by the United States, could trigger high instability within the country.