North Korea imposed a nationwide lockdown Thursday to control its first acknowledged COVID-19 outbreak after holding for more than two years to a widely doubted claim of a perfect record-keeping out the virus that has spread to nearly every place in the world.
The outbreak forced leader Kim Jong Un to wear a mask in public likely for the first time since the start of the pandemic, but the scale of transmissions inside North Korea wasn’t immediately known.
A failure to slow infections could have serious consequences because the country has a poor health care system and its 26 million people are believed to be mostly unvaccinated. Some experts say the North, by its rare admission of an outbreak, maybe seeking outside aid.
The official Korean Central News Agency said tests of samples collected Sunday from an unspecified number of people with fevers in the capital, Pyongyang, confirmed they were infected with the omicron variant.
In response, Kim during a ruling party Politburo meeting called for a thorough lockdown of cities and counties and said workplaces should be isolated by units to block the virus from spreading, KCNA said.
He urged health workers to step up disinfection efforts at workplaces and homes and mobilize reserve medical supplies.
North Korea has maintained strict anti-virus controls at its border for more than two years and didn’t provide further details about its new lockdown.
But an Associated Press photographer on the South Korean side of the border saw dozens of people working in farming fields or walking on footpaths at a North Korean border town — an indication the lockdown doesn’t require people to stay home or it exempts farm work.
The North’s government has shunned vaccines offered by the U.N.-backed COVAX distribution program, possibly because those have international monitoring requirements.
