North Korea has confirmed 15 more deaths and hundreds of thousands of additional patients with fevers as it mobilizes more than a million health and other workers to try to suppress the country's first COVID-19 outbreak, state media reported Sunday.
After maintaining a widely disputed claim to be coronavirus-free for more than two years, North Korea announced Thursday that it had found its first COVID-19 patients since the pandemic began.
Since Thursday, North Korea has imposed a nationwide lockdown to fight the virus. Observers say that could further strain the country's fragile economy, which has suffered in recent years due to sharply reduced external trade caused by pandemic-related border shutdowns, punishing UN economic sanctions over its nuclear program and its own mismanagement.
"All provinces, cities and counties of the country have been totally locked down and working units, production units and residential units closed from each other since the morning of May 12 and strict and intensive examination of all the people is being conducted," KCNA said. Despite the outbreak, Kim has ordered officials to go ahead with planned economic, construction and other state projects, a suggestion that authorities aren't requiring people to confine themselves at home. Hours after it admitted its virus outbreak Thursday, North Korea even fired ballistic missiles toward the sea in a continuation of its recent streak of weapons tests.
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