North Korea has claimed that not even a single person in the entire country is infected with coronavirus. This claim has attracted increasing scepticism. North Korea shut down its borders and took rigorous containment steps to achieve zero cases of coronavirus.
The US military commander of South Korea said, it’s an impossible claim, and it’s not true. An expert from North Korea in an interview with BBC revealed that, “it was likely to have cases initially, but later mass outbreak occurred”.
According to John Hopkins University of Italy, there are over one million active coronavirus cases throughout the world and about 54000 people have died so far.
The director of North Korea’s Central Emergency Anti-epidemic headquarter, Pak Myog su, ensured the news agencies that, “not a single person of North Koreais affected by coronavirus till date”.
“We took immediate measures, and necessary steps liked are infecting goods, closed borders, blocked sea and airways, quarantined people who entered the country and strict inspection”.
The head of US military force in South Korea, Robert Abrams remarked that no coronavirus cases in North Korea as false. In a joint interview with VOA and CNN he said, “it is an impossible claim as per everything that we have seen”. However, he was not sure of the number of cases and the source from where this information came.
Oliver Hotham, the managing editor of NK News, said that North Korea may surely have coronavirus cases.
“Despite being a neighbour of South Korea and China having no cases is quite questionable”, he said, He said to support because of high trade and economic relationship among the countries. I really don’t see if it’s possible to prevent it”, he added. He also said that it is unlikely to have full-scale outbreak. They took complete secure measures to minimize the epidemic, he said.
North Korea took steps much quickly to battle coronavirus as compared to other countries.
NorthKorea closed its borders in January. It quarantined all the foreigners in his capital city Pyongyang. At the same time China’s coronavirus cases was increasing exponentially.
Fyodor Tertitskiy, senior researcher of Koohim University, said that “The country is presently campaigning to teach people to prevent the spread of coronavirus”.