The North Korean authorities have ordered a five-day confinement starting this Wednesday in Pyongyang, due to the increase in infections of an unspecified respiratory disease, according to the specialized media NK News reported today.
The ordinance urges citizens to remain in their homes until next Sunday and to send body temperature measurements to the authorities several times a day, according to the aforementioned outlet, which had access to the official communication of the regime.
North Korean authorities cited the "increase" in cases of respiratory diseases such as the common cold as the reason, although they did not mention Covid-19.
At the moment it is unknown if there are other areas of the country subject to the confinement ordinance, which is similar to another issued in May 2022, when the regime recognized the spread of the disease in the country.
North Korea announced last August that it had completely eradicated the virus from its territory, a claim that was quarantined by many experts due to the conditions of the impoverished and isolated country's health system and its lack of vaccines and tests, among other factors.
The North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un, then declared "victory" over the covid and ordered the lifting of the most severe anti-epidemic measures three months after the country officially detected its first case of coronavirus since the pandemic began.
The regime assured that in that period some 4.7 million people -or 20% of the country's population- had a fever and that just over twenty died, data that does not match the evolution of the pandemic in other countries. and that lead specialists to think that a good part of the cases recorded as suspected covid could be typhoid fever.
Likewise, North Korean state television broadcast a documentary last Monday extolling the national management of the Covid-19 pandemic, an "unprecedented event" that led the country to a total closure of its borders.
The broadcast, focused on "the great victory of the quarantine" that was applied in the country during the health crisis, reviewed everything from the regime's containment measures to testimonies from survivors of the "fever" that spread in 2022 in its territory.
