Defending that no cases have been detected since 2019, when the coronavirus first appeared, North Korea announced that the virus was first seen in a person in the country in April. Then the number of cases increased rapidly.
North Korean state media claimed that the virus first entered the country by infecting “people who touched foreign objects” at the border.
State media reported that the administration had “warned the public to beware of foreign objects flying in from the South and crossing the border.”
Activists from South Korea on the country’s southern border are sending both flyers and humanitarian aid in balloons to the other side of the border.
It is thought that the news in the North Korean state media is also targeting these balloons.
In response to this claim, Seoul said it was “unlikely” for Covid to have crossed the border in this way.
According to the North Korean media, an official investigation was carried out on the source of Covid and it was revealed that “two people who touched foreign objects on the South Korean border at the beginning of April were infected, and the coronavirus spread to the country from here.”
It was also stated in the news that these people were an 18-year-old soldier and a five-year-old boy.
As a result of the research, “a warning was given to approach sensitively the foreign objects that come to the border region as a result of wind and other climatic events or with balloons”.
Anyone who sees a foreign object in these areas has been asked to alert the authorities; It was stated that these objects will be “destroyed by the epidemic fighting teams”.
Although South Korea was not directly mentioned in the report, Pyongyang’s statement about the entry of Covid into the country was strongly rejected in the statements made in Seoul.
Since the end of April, 4.7 million people in the country have been treated for high fever. It is estimated that all of these people have coronavirus.
The country’s leader, Kim Jong-un, described the epidemic in May as “the biggest disaster the country has seen since its founding”.
Although some experts believe otherwise, the administration argued that no Covid cases were seen in the country until April.
A population of 25 million is in a vulnerable position due to a lack of vaccination programs and a poor health system.
A few weeks ago, it was announced that Pyongyang had accepted the Covid vaccines produced in China. However, it is not known how many people have been vaccinated in the country to date.
Travel between the two countries resumed earlier this year after the country closed its borders with China in 2020. The first Covid case was also announced after the restrictions at the borders were eased.