North Korea lifts Covid lockdown amid ‘stable’ virus situation, according to media
New fever cases have dropped to under 100,00 in North Korea (representative image).
North Korea withdrew virus lockdown measures in its capital that had been in place for more than two weeks after leader Kim Jong Un's policies were said to have controlled the country's first Covid-19 outbreak.According to diplomatic sources quoted by Yonhap News Agency of South Korea on Monday (May 30), Kim's administration has partially removed the lockdown in Pyongyang and reduced restrictions in "stabilised regions."
Pyongyang residents were allowed to leave their houses for the first time since May 12 and businesses were progressively reopening, according to sources in the isolated state quoted by NK News on Sunday.
North Korea has refused to accept foreign help with the pandemic or to verify any of its numbers for the public health catastrophe, which might have swamped the country's ageing medical infrastructure and put Kim's leadership in jeopardy. It and Eritrea are the only two countries that haven't given their citizens vaccines, putting them at risk.
Kim lifted the lockdown hours after heading a Politburo meeting on Sunday, according to NK News. The same day, the state's official media said that "the pandemic situation is being handled and improved across the country," while another report claimed that daily cases have dropped by roughly 75 per centfrom a peak of 392,920 two weeks ago.
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"Temperature checks, hand sanitizer, and following the directions of pandemic response professionals" are still essential, according to NK News.
North Korea has not labelled the hundreds of thousands of fever cases as "Covid," owing to a lack of testing kits to confirm that the cases are coronavirus-related.
Also read |COVID-19: Experts express disbelief as North Korea reports unbelievable fatality rate of 0.002%
Kim mobilised troops to try to stem the spread of what the government calls a "malicious" epidemic, and his propaganda machine went into overdrive in an effort to stop it. Mr Kim has been portrayed in state media as pushing ahead with pandemic control efforts and blaming any failures on cadres who have not obeyed his orders.
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