North Korea reports first COVID-19 outbreak, orders lockdown in ‘gravest emergency’

North Korea confirmed its first COVID-19 outbreak on Thursday, calling it the “gravest national emergency” and ordering a national lockdown, with state media reporting an Omicron variant had been detected in Pyongyang.

“There has been the biggest emergency incident in the country, with a hole in our emergency quarantine front, that has been kept safely over the past two years and three months since February 2020,” official KCNA news agency said, referring to detected cases of a sub-variant of the highly transmissible Omicron virus, also known as BA.2.

Kim ordered all cities and counties of the country to “strictly lock down” their regions to prevent the spread of the coronavirus and said emergency reserve medical supplies would be mobilized, according to KCNA. The isolated North has enforced strict quarantine measures, including border lockdowns, since the pandemic began in early 2020. In July that year, Kim declared an emergency and imposed a lockdown on Kaesong, near the inter-Korean border, for three weeks after a man who defected to the South in 2017 returned to the city showing coronavirus symptoms.

South Korea’s presidential office told Reuters that President Yoon Suk-yeol, who was sworn in on May 10, will continue separating humanitarian aid from the political situation, opening the door to provide support to the North. “Externally, there may be an indirect message of the need for co-operating with the international community if it proves to be difficult to overcome on its own,” Yang added.

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