The coronavirus was originally believed to have broken out in towns close to the nations' border after individuals there touched "alien stuff," according to North Korea's suggestion, it had come into the country on foreign objects from South Korea.
The outbreak was not specifically attributed to the South by North Korea. However, the State Emergency Epidemic Prevention Headquarters of that state issued a warning to its citizens, advising them to "vigilantly deal with alien things" transported across the border by "balloons, the wind, or other weather phenomena."
North Korea: COVID-19 Surge Caused by "Alien Things" From South
Activists in South Korea, largely North Korean defectors, have been sending balloons across the border for years, filled with leaflets criticizing Kim Jong-un as well as money, tiny Bibles, and USB drives holding information from the outside world. North Korea, which strictly regulates information access, has reacted angrily to these ads and even attempted to fire down balloons.
The launches were forbidden by South Korea's previous administration last year on the grounds that they irritated the North. After consulting with specialists in disease prevention, South Korea stated on Friday that it was impossible for the balloon releases to have introduced COVID-19 into the North. Activists who crossed the tightly guarded border, also known as the Demilitarized Zone, using balloons, accused the North of trying to transfer responsibility for the outbreak to the South and scare its people into avoiding the leaflets.
On May 12, after stating for two years that there had been no instances of Covid, North Korea proclaimed a "maximum emergency," alleging that an outbreak had started in late April and isolating all of its towns and counties. It has so far documented 4.7 million instances of patients experiencing symptoms similar to Covid, such as a high temperature. On June 15, North Korea said that 73 individuals had perished from the illness; however, it has not since supplied any further information.
According to The New York Times, North's data is deemed unreliable by outside experts, in part because the nation lacks sufficient testing kits and facilities to precisely follow a significant outbreak. In recent weeks, it has been said that it has the virus under control; on Friday, it reported that the number of suspected new infections each day had fallen to 4,570 from a peak of 390,000 in mid-May.
China Tests Air From North Korea
Kim Jong Un, the leader of the North, issued an emergency declaration and imposed a three-week lockdown on Kaesong town, which is close to the border with South Korea, in July 2020 after a man who had defected to the South in 2017 returned to the city with signs of COVID-19.
The North claims that the COVID-19 wave is showing signs of abating, although analysts believe the numbers published by media outlets under official control may be underreported.
On Friday, 4,570 additional people in North Korea reported having feverish symptoms, bringing the total number of fever sufferers since late April to 4.74 million. Due to an apparent shortage of testing kits, Pyongyang has started publicizing the number of fever patients each day without designating them as COVID-19 patients, NDTV reported.
Meanwhile, China is looking for COVID-19 traces in North Korean air and advising border residents to close their windows on days with a southerly wind.
Workers from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention install air monitoring equipment adjacent to the Yalu River, which divides the two nations, in Dandong, a city on the eastern border.
Per The Daily Telegraph via MSN, the machines are said to be looking for droplets of COVID-19, which has just seen its largest outbreak, that are flying in the air from the North. Residents who lived close to the river, which in some places is less than one kilometer wide, were told in a government warning earlier in June to keep their windows closed and avoid wandering by the river. Additionally, they were requested to submit to more regular testing.
Authorities have clamped down on river smuggling as well, offering monetary rewards for information leading to individuals responsible. In the 2.19 million-person metropolis, inexplicable chains of transmission appear to be what led to the relocation. Dandong, which has historically been a center for trade with North Korea, has undergone one of China's "zero-Covid" strategy's most strenuous lockdowns.
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