Guwahati: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Thursday (May 12) ordered a nationwide lockdown after the country confirmed its first-ever case of COVID-19.
According to the news agency AFP, the state media has declared it a ‘severe national emergency incident’ after more than two years of holding the record for not reporting a single case of COVID-19.
The official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said, “Samples collected from patients sick with a fever in Pyongyang “coincided with Omicron BA.2 variant”.
In response, top officials, including leader Kim Jong Un, held a crisis politburo meeting on Thursday to discuss the outbreak and announced they would implement the ‘maximum emergency epidemic prevention system’.
As per the KCNA report, Kim Jong Un “called on all the cities and counties of the whole country to thoroughly lockdown their areas.
How many people tested positive for COVID-19 in North Korea wasn’t immediately known.
North Korea so far has turned down vaccines offered by the UN-backed COVAX distribution program, possibly because those have international monitoring requirements.
