North Korean citizens observe, in a file image, a billboard advertising a residential project in Pyonyang (North Korea). HOW HWEE YOUNG (EFE)
The North Korean authorities have ordered a five-day confinement starting this Wednesday in Pyongyang, due to the increase in infections of an unspecified respiratory disease, according to the specialized media NK News reported today.
The ordinance urges citizens to stay in their homes until next Sunday and to send body temperature measurements to the authorities several times a day, according to the aforementioned outlet, which has had access to the official communication issued by the regime.
The authorities pointed to the “increase” in cases of respiratory diseases such as the common cold as the reason, although they do not mention covid-19.
At the moment it is unknown if there are other areas of the country subject to the confinement ordinance, which is similar to another issued in May 2022, when the regime did recognize the spread of the disease in the country.
North Korea, one of the most isolated dictatorships in the world, announced last August that it had completely eradicated the virus from its territory, a claim that was questioned by numerous experts due to the conditions of the impoverished country's health system and its lack of vaccines and tests, among other factors.
The North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, then declared "victory" over the covid and ordered the lifting of the most severe measures against the pandemic three months after the country officially detected its first case of coronavirus.
The regime assured that in that period some 4.7 million people — around 20% of the country's population — had a fever and that just over twenty died, data that does not match the evolution of the pandemic in other countries. .
Likewise, North Korean state television broadcast a documentary last Monday extolling the national management of the covid-19 pandemic, an "unprecedented event" that led the country to a total closure of its borders.
The broadcast, focused on "the great victory of the quarantine" that was applied in the country during the health crisis, reviewed everything from the regime's containment measures to testimonies from survivors of the "fever" that spread in 2022 in its territory.
