(SEOUL) North Korea on Friday reported no people “suffering from a fever” for the seventh day in a row, and said all those who suffered from COVID-19 in the country are now cured.
Posted at 7:28
“No new cases of fever were reported in the past week, and all those who received treatment recovered,” the official KCNA news agency reported on Friday.
The term “feverish patient” is used by the North Korean authorities to designate people infected with the coronavirus because, according to some, of a lack of screening tests.
North Korea, one of the first countries in the world to close its borders in January 2020 after the virus emerged in neighboring China, has long boasted of its ability to guard against the virus.
Pyongyang announced its first case of the coronavirus on May 12, and leader Kim Jong-un has taken the fight against the outbreak personally in hand.
KCNA PHOTO VIA REUTERS ARCHIVES
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un
According to KCNA, the epidemic situation has now “entered a stable stage”.
North Korea has recorded nearly 4.8 million infections since the end of April, with just 74 deaths, an official case fatality rate of 0.002%, according to the news agency.
The country’s hospitals are notoriously under-equipped, with few intensive care units and no coronavirus treatment or vaccine available, experts say.
Neighboring South Korea, which has an efficient health system and a high vaccination rate among its population, has a mortality rate of 0.12% by comparison, according to official figures.
“It’s hard to believe a country if it says the confirmed number of patients has suddenly gone to zero,” Ahn Chan-il, a specialist in North Korean studies, told AFP.
“Like his military weapons and nuclear programs, it seems fair to say that COVID-19 is also being used to highlight Kim Jong-un’s leadership and strengthen [le sentiment] of loyalty to him, whatever the truth.
In late May, Pyongyang said it was starting to see “progress” in controlling the outbreak, but experts, including the WHO, have repeatedly cast doubt on that claim.
For Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul, Pyongyang’s assertion that the epidemic is under control seems “fairly reliable”.
The situation would seem to be returning to normal as “there are no signs of tightening border controls, no official requests for medical aid or equipment have been made to Beijing and diplomats based in Pyongyang remain in place”. , he added.