Seoul: North Korea on Sunday reported 15 additional deaths from an ongoing “epidemic” and 296,180 more people with fever symptoms nationwid...
Seoul: North Korea on Sunday reported 15 additional deaths from an ongoing “epidemic” and 296,180 more people with fever symptoms nationwide, three days after it announced a Covid-19 outbreak for the first time in two years.
The new cases, which occurred between Friday
evening and 6 p.m. on Saturday, have raised the total number of deaths to 42 and
that of those who have shown fever symptoms since late April to over 820,620,
according to Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency.
Of them, more than 496,030 have been cured and 324,550 are being treated, Yonhap News Agency quoted KCNA as saying.
It cited data compiled by the “state emergency
epidemic prevention headquarters”.
The North’s state-controlled media have used the
expression “fevered persons”, instead of coronavirus patients or confirmed
cases, which observers here view as attributable to a lack of any ,Covid testing
kits and other equipment to confirm infection
With “swift state emergency measures” taken to curb
the spread of the virus, KCNA said in its report, that many of the dead were
“careless in taking drugs due to the lack of knowledge and understanding of
stealth Omicron variant virus infection disease and its correct treatment
method”.
“All provinces, cities and counties of the country
have been totally locked down and working units, production units, and
residential units closed from each other since the morning of May 12 and strict
and intensive examination of all the people is being conducted.”
KCNA also said that the nation’s senior officials have
been donating their private reserve medicines.
On May 12, North Korea made public an outbreak of the
stealth Omicron variant on its soil after more than two years of claiming that
it was free of the coronavirus.
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