Pyongyang, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK)- DPRK leader, Kim Jong-un, has declared victory over the COVID-19 pandemic citing that the Asian country will soon relax its COVID-19 restrictions.
During a speech on Thursday, Kim hailed doctors and other health workers and asserted that the country had wiped out the pathogen within its borders.
“The painful quarantine war has come to an end, and today we have finally declared victory. (The government will immediately) lower the quarantine level from the maximum emergency quarantine system that has been in operation since May 12,” said Kim.
However, Kim said the country must still maintain a “steel-strong anti-epidemic barrier and intensify the anti-epidemic work until the end of the global health crisis.”
Health officials also said that the country was running intensive medical checks nationwide, with daily PCR tests on water collected in borderline areas among the measures.
Nevertheless, the World Health Organization (WHO) has cast doubts on DPRK’s claims, saying last month it believed the situation was getting worse, not better, amid an absence of independent data.
Since May, the country reported more than 4.7 million cases of fever symptoms, afflicting nearly a fifth of its population of 25 million. At its peak, it reported more than 750 000 fever cases in one day. It now claims just 74 fever patients or about 0.002 percent have died, which would make its fatality rate the lowest in the world.
Experts warn that these numbers cannot be independently verified, especially given the exodus of international aid workers from the country, which sealed its already-tight borders during the pandemic.
Meanwhile, Chinese authorities have hastily erected three makeshift hospitals in Tibet, after the autonomous region recorded its first COVID-19 outbreak. The new facilities provide 2 000 beds in the capital, Lhasa, and 1 000 in the city of Shigatse.
Tibet reported 28 COVID-19 cases on Tuesday and has imposed a partial lockdown of Lhasa including the famed Potala Palace, the traditional winter residence of the Dalai Lamas, while it mass tests its people to root out hidden chains of transmission.
With the onset of the northern summer holiday season, and its international borders effectively closed, China is grappling with flare-ups in multiple tourism hotspots, and local officials are turning to the COVID-Zero playbook of movement restrictions, mass testing and surveillance to try to get the cases under control. The virus is spreading fast in areas including Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia and Guangdong.
