North Korea announced Tuesday that more than a million individuals have already recovered from suspected COVID-19 illnesses, just a week after revealing an outbreak that it appears to be managing in isolation.
Yesterday, the country’s pandemic response agency reported 232,880 new cases of fever and six deaths in state media.
These results bring the total number of deaths and fever cases to 62 since late last month.
According to the report, at least 691,170 people are still under quarantine.
Outside scientists believe that the majority of the fevers are caused by COVID-19, but North Korea lacks the necessary tests to confirm this.
Because the virus can be carried and spread by persons who do not develop fevers or other symptoms, the outbreak is very certainly larger than the fever tally.
It is also unknown how more than a million people healed so swiftly since the country’s impoverished, unvaccinated population of 26 million people has little medicine, medical equipment, and health facilities.
According to some experts, the North may just be releasing people from confinement once their fevers have subsided.
On Tuesday, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus stated that North Korea has not answered to its request for additional information about its outbreak.
Prior to admitting COVID-19 infections for the first time last week, North Korea maintained a widely disputed claim of keeping the virus out.
It also rejected millions of vaccination doses supplied by the UN-backed COVAX distribution programme, most likely due to international monitoring obligations.
North Korea and Eritrea are the only sovereign UN-member countries that have not implemented immunizations, according to Tedros, but neither has reacted to the WHO’s offers of vaccines, medications, testing, and technical assistance.
“WHO is highly concerned about the possibility of further spread in” North Korea, Tedros said, adding that the country has an alarming number of people with underlying diseases that make them more prone to contract severe COVID-19.
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