How North Korea Went from 'Zero COVID' to 1.2 Million Cases in 72 Hours
It took almost two and a half years for SARS-CoV-2 to travel from the Chinese city of Wuhan to the North Korean capital Pyongyang.
That’s according to the North Korean government, which until late last week had firmly denied any confirmed cases of the virus within their borders—a distinction that had made them one of only three countries worldwide to have remained uncontaminated by the pandemic to date.
But Thursday saw state media confirm that an “obscure febrile disease” had infected 350,000 people nationwide, in what experts believe is almost certainly an outbreak of COVID-19. Then, three days later, state media confirmed a total of more than 1.2 million people across the country reporting symptoms of a “fever.”
As of Sunday, 564,860 people are being treated for this “fever,” which appears to have been spreading explosively throughout North Korea since late April. At least 50 people are confirmed to have died, eight of them on Sunday alone, in what is almost certainly a gross underestimate of mortalities by local authorities. One expert told VICE World News last week he expects “mass death” to occur.
In the space of just 72 hours, North Korea’s epidemiological status has shifted from a self-proclaimed success story to a public health catastrophe. Given the so-called hermit kingdom’s notorious secrecy and extremely limited testing capacity, the exact case numbers are impossible to quantify, and these official figures almost certainly represent the low end of the scale.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/dypnpy/north-korea-zero-covid-to-12-million-cases
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This is a horror story. As Rachel says, watch this space.
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