The World: North Korea’s Kim says COVID-19 ‘could be said to have entered the country’: KCNA

Last updated on September 11th, 2021 at 02:37 pm

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un convened an emergency politburo assembly after a person suspected of having COVID-19 returned from South Korea after illegally crossing the border this month, nation media stated on Sunday.

If confirmed, it would be the first case formally mentioned by North Korean authorities, who have so far stated the us of a has no verified cases of the new coronavirus.

Kim declared a kingdom of emergency and imposed a lockdown on the border metropolis of Kaesong, calling it a “critical scenario in which the vicious virus should be stated to have entered the country,” state information corporation KCNA reported.

According to KCNA, a individual who defected to South Korea three years in the past returned throughout the fortified border that divides the two Koreas with signs that advised COVID-19.

“An emergency tournament took place in Kaesong City the place a runaway who went to the south three years ago, a individual who is suspected to have been infected with the vicious virus back on July 19 after illegally crossing the demarcation line,” KCNA said.

KCNA did no longer mainly point out whether or not the man or woman had been tested however stated an “uncertain end result was made from several scientific check-ups of the secretion of that person’s higher respiratory organ and blood,” prompting officers to quarantine the individual and look at anybody he may additionally have been in contact with.

North Korea has obtained lots of coronavirus testing kits from Russia and other countries and imposed strict border closures. Thousands of humans in North Korea were quarantined, but restrictions had lately eased.

In current weeks, North Korea has also stepped up a campaign criticizing defectors to South Korea as “human scum” and calling for South Korea to crack down on companies that send propaganda messages and food resource into the North.

Kim ordered an investigation into the navy units alongside the border where the person used to be suspected of crossing to “administer a extreme punishment and take imperative measures.”

(asia)