North Korea called for improved measures against the rapidly spreading COVID-19 pandemic at a meeting presided by North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, state media reported yesterday, without acknowledging whether the country had reported any infections.
The already isolated, nuclear-armed North quickly shut down its borders after the coronavirus was first detected in neighboring China in January, and imposed strict containment measures.
Officials in Pyongyang and its state media have repeatedly said that the North remains totally free of the virus.
Photo: AFP/KCNA VIA KNS
However, yesterday’s report did not make that assertion.
The coronavirus epidemic — which has infected more than 1.78 million worldwide — has become “a great disaster threatening the whole mankind, regardless of borders and continents,” the North’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported.
“Such environment can become a condition creating some obstacles to our struggle and progress,” it said, adding that Pyongyang maintained a “very stable anti-epidemic situation.”
The meeting of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea on Saturday discussed changing policy tasks due to COVID-19, KCNA reported, as officials called for strict and thorough checks of the infiltration of the virus.
A joint resolution was adopted “on more thoroughly taking national measures for protecting the life and safety of our people to cope with the worldwide epidemic disease,” it added.
Photographs carried by the official Rodong Sinmun newspaper showed none of the officials — including Kim — wearing masks and sitting close to each other around a round table.
Experts have said that North Korea is particularly vulnerable to the virus because of its weak healthcare system, while defectors have accused Pyongyang of covering up an outbreak.
As part of its anti-virus efforts North Korea put thousands of its own people and hundreds of foreigners — including diplomats — into isolation and mounted disinfection drives.
The WHO said that 709 people — 11 foreigners and 698 nationals — have been tested for the virus as of April 2, while more than 24,800 people have been released from quarantine.
Nearly every other country has reported coronavirus cases. Aside from China, South Korea endured one of the worst early outbreaks of the virus.
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