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On Saturday, North Korea reported no new cases of the fever for the first time since it abruptly admitted its first domestic outbreak of COVID-19 and put its 26 million people under more draconian restrictions in May.
There have been widespread outside doubts about the accuracy of North Korea’s statistics, as its death toll is too low and its daily fever cases have plummeted too quickly recently. Some experts say North Korea has likely manipulated the scale of illness and death to help leader Kim Jong Un maintain absolute control amid mounting economic hardship.
The northern anti-epidemic center said through state media that it had found zero fever patients in the last 24 hours, keeping the country’s total caseload at about 4.8 million. Its death toll remains at 74, with a fatality rate of 0.0016% which would be the lowest in the world if true.
Despite zero confirmed cases, it remains unclear whether North Korea would formally declare victory over COVID-19 and lift pandemic-related restrictions as experts say it could face a viral resurgence later this year like many other countries. North Korea’s state media recently said it is ramping up and upgrading its anti-epidemic systems to protect against subvariants of the coronavirus and other diseases such as monkeypox that occur in other countries.
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In this June 28, 2022 photo released by the North Korean government, North Korean employees disinfect an underground store facility in Pyongyang, North Korea. (Korea Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP, file)
“The unique organizational power and unity of (North Korea’s) society is on full display in the struggle to achieve victory in the emergency anti-epidemic campaign,” the Korean Central News Agency said on Saturday. .
North Korea’s claimed zero cases could be symbolic in its efforts to establish Kim’s image as a leader who has suppressed the outbreak much more quickly than other countries. Kim would need those credentials to garner greater public support to overcome economic difficulties caused by pandemic-related border closures, UN sanctions and his own mismanagement, observers say.
“In North Korea, public health and politics cannot be separated from each other, and this aspect has been revealed again in its COVID-19 outbreak,” said Ahn Kyung-su, head of DPRKHEALTH.ORG, a health-focused website. problems in North Korea. “Since they started with manipulated data, they are now ending the outbreak with manipulated data.”
North Korea was expected to claim zero cases as its daily fever burden has plunged in recent days (there were three cases reported on Friday and 11 on Thursday) from a peak of around 400,000 a day in May The country, which lacks test kits, has identified only a fraction of its 4.8 million fever patients as confirmed cases of COVID-19.
“In realistic terms, hundreds of thousands of daily fever cases reaching zero in less than three months is an impossible thing,” said Lee Yo Han, a professor at the School of Public Health at Ajou University in Korea. from the South
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On Saturday, July 30, 2022, North Korea reported no new cases of fever for the first time since it abruptly admitted its first domestic outbreak of COVID-19 and put its 26 million people under more draconian restrictions in may (AP Photo/Cha Song Ho, File)
Many outside experts previously worried that the outbreak in the north would have devastating consequences because most of its people are believed to be unvaccinated and about 40 percent are reportedly malnourished. But now, activists and defectors with contacts in North Korea say they haven’t heard of anything like a humanitarian disaster happening in the North. They say the country’s outbreak has also likely peaked.
In a sign of a wave of calm, North Korea this week held mass public unmasked events in its capital, Pyongyang, where thousands of Korean War veterans and others gathered from around the country to celebrate the 69th anniversary of the end of 1950. -53 war. During a birthday ceremony, Kim hugged and exchanged handshakes with some veterans before taking group photos with other participants. None were wearing masks, according to state media photographs.
Shin Young-jeon, a professor of preventive medicine at Hanyang University in Seoul, said North Korea would know that zero cases does not mean it has no patients with COVID-19 because there are likely asymptomatic cases. He said North Korea probably won’t announce that it has officially beaten the pandemic anytime soon because of concerns about a resurgence.
“North Korea’s state media has already used expressions as if it is winning its anti-virus fight. The only other expression it can use now is to declare that the coronavirus has been completely eliminated from its territory,” Shin said. “But if new cases emerge again, North Korea would lose face.”
The only route for North Korea’s new viral spread from abroad is likely to be China, its main ally that shares a long and porous border with the country, and North Korea would likely have a hard time declaring victory. on the pandemic until China does, Lee said. .
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In this photo provided by the North Korean government, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, center, visits a pharmacy in Pyongyang, North Korea, May 15, 2022. (Korea Central News Agency/Korea Central News Agency news from Korea via AP, File)
In this photo provided by the North Korean government, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, center, visits a pharmacy in Pyongyang, North Korea, on May 15, 2022.
The border between North Korea and China has been largely closed for more than 2 1/2 years, except for a few months when it was reopened earlier this year.
Some observers say the North’s heightened pandemic response has given Kim a tool to push his authoritarian rule amid public complaints about the longstanding restrictions. They say North Korea could report a small number of fever cases again in the coming days.
Foreign experts struggle to assess the true death toll in North Korea. They note that a shortage of test kits in the north would also make it virtually impossible for the country to determine whether elderly people or others with underlying illnesses died from COVID-19 or something else.
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Shin, the university professor, stood by his earlier study that predicted North Korea would likely suffer 100,000 to 150,000 deaths. It said it used data from South Korea that showed its death rate for unvaccinated people for the omicron variant, the outbreak of which North Korea admitted in May, was 0.6 percent.
Other experts say the death toll in the North would be a few thousand at most. They said North Korean monitoring groups must have detected a higher death toll.