The Manila Times

North Korea reports first Covid cases

Kim places country under lockdown to contain spread

SEOUL: North Korea confirmed its first-ever Covid-19 cases on Thursday and declared a “serious emergency,” with leader Kim Jong Un ordering lockdowns across the country.

The nuclear-armed nation had never admitted to a case of Covid-19 and the government had imposed a rigid coronavirus blockade of its borders since the start of the pandemic in March 2020.

But samples taken from patients sick with fever in the capital Pyongyang “coincided with [the] Omicron BA.2 variant,” the staterun Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported.

Top officials, including Kim, held a crisis politburo meeting on Thursday to discuss the outbreak and announced they would implement a “maximum emergency epidemic prevention system.”

The leader “called on all the cities and counties of the whole country to thoroughly lock down their areas,” KCNA reported, although details of the restrictions were not immediately given.

Kim told the meeting the goal was to “quickly cure the infections in order to eradicate the source of the virus spread,” the news agency said.

He added that North Korea would “overcome the current sudden situation and win victory in the emergency epidemic prevention work.”

It was unclear from the KCNA report how many Covid infections had been detected.

North Korea’s crumbling health infrastructure would struggle to deal with a major outbreak, with its 25 million people not believed to be vaccinated, experts say.

“For Pyongyang to publicly admit Omicron cases, the public health situation must be serious,” said Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul.

“Pyongyang [is] likely [to] double down on lockdowns, even though the failure of China’s zero-Covid strategy suggests that approach won’t work against the Omicron variant.”

No vaccines

North Korea has turned down offers of vaccinations from the World Health Organization (WHO),

China and Russia.

Accepting vaccines through the WHO’s Covax scheme “requires transparency over how vaccines are distributed,” Go Myong-hyun, researcher at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies, told Agence France-Presse (AFP). “That’s why North Korea rejected it.”

North Korea is surrounded by countries that have battled — or are still fighting to control — significant Omicron outbreaks.

South Korea, which has high rates of vaccination, recently eased almost all its Covid-19 restrictions, with cases sharply down after an Omicron-fueled spike in March.

Neighboring China, the world’s only major economy to still maintain a zero-Covid policy, is battling multiple Omicron outbreaks.

Major Chinese cities, including the financial capital Shanghai, have been under strict lockdowns for weeks.

It appears North Korea would try to avoid China’s extreme measures like “virtually imprisoning residents in apartments,” Cheong Seongchang of the Sejong Institute said.

But even more limited lockdowns would create a “severe food shortage and the same chaos China is now facing,” he added.

Seoul-based specialist site NK News reported that areas of Pyongyang had already been locked down for two days, with reports of panic buying.

Nuke test?

The public emergence of Covid in Pyongyang could also have repercussions on North Korea’s nuclear program.

South Korea’s hawkish new president Yoon Suk-yeol, who was sworn on Tuesday, has vowed to get tough with Pyongyang after five years of failed diplomacy.

After high-profile talks collapsed in 2019, North Korea has doubled-down on weapons testing, conducting a blitz of launches this year, including intercontinental ballistic missiles.

But the Covid-19 outbreak could potentially disrupt their military program, analysts said.

“There is a possibility of delaying the nuclear test in order to focus on overcoming the coronavirus,” Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies, told AFP.

But he said if public fears over an outbreak were to spread, Kim might go ahead with a test “to divert this fear to another place.”

Asia And Oceania

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2022-05-13T07:00:00.0000000Z

2022-05-13T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://digitaledition.manilatimes.net/article/281968906281035

The Manila Times