North Korea confirmed its first-ever Covid cases on Thursday and declared a “serious emergency”, with leader Kim Jong Un ordering lockdowns across the country, reported AFP.
The nuclear-armed country 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 2020.
But samples taken from patients sick with fever in Pyongyang “coincided with Omicron BA.2 variant”, the official Korean Central News Agency reported.
Top officials, including leader Kim Jong Un, held a crisis politburo meeting on Thursday to discuss the outbreak and announced they would implement the “maximum emergency epidemic prevention system”.
Kim “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 that the goal was to “quickly cure the infections in order to eradicate the source of the virus spread,” according to KCNA.
