North Korea Reports 350,000 Likely COVID Cases

Reuters reports:

At least one person confirmed to have COVID-19 has died in North Korea and hundreds of thousands have shown fever symptoms, state media said on Friday, offering hints at the potentially dire scale of country’s first confirmed outbreak of the pandemic.

The data represents an unprecedented admission of an “explosive” outbreak in a country that had reported no previous confirmed cases since the pandemic began, and could mark a grave public health, economic and political crisis for the isolated regime.

About 187,800 people are being treated in isolation after a fever of unidentified origin has “explosively spread nationwide” since late April, the official KCNA news agency reported. Roughly 350,000 people have shown signs of that fever.

Read the full article. Yesterday Kim Jong-Un announced a nationwide lockdown.

North Korea reports first COVID-19 death after 350,000 sickened with fever https://t.co/7FTEzT1P3h pic.twitter.com/joGDtvDrPh

— Reuters (@Reuters) May 13, 2022

North Korea announced that six people died and 350,000 have been treated for a fever that has spread “explosively” across the country, a day after its first acknowledgement of a COVID-19 outbreak. https://t.co/fNRSMXDK9e

— ABC News (@ABC) May 13, 2022