North Korea has reported no new fever cases for the first time since it abruptly admitted to its first domestic COVID-19 outbreak and placed its 26 million people under more draconian restrictions in May

ByHYUNG-JIN KIM Associated Press

July 29, 2022, 7:08 PM

SEOUL, South Korea -- North Korea on Saturday reported no new fever cases for the first time since it abruptly admitted to its first domestic COVID-19 outbreak and placed its 26 million people under more draconian restrictions in May.

There have been widespread outside doubts about the accuracy of North Korean statistics as its reported fatalities are too low and its daily fever cases have been plummeting too fast recently. Some experts say North Korea has likely manipulated the scale of illness and deaths to help leader Kim Jong Un maintain absolute control amid mounting economic difficulties.

The North’s state emergency anti-epidemic center said via state media it had found zero fever patients in the latest 24-hour period. It said its total caseload was about 4.8 million and that about 99.99% of them have fully recovered. The country’s death count remains at 74, a mortality rate of 0.0016% that would be the world’s lowest if true.

Despite the claimed zero cases, it is unclear whether and how soon North Korea would formally declare victory over COVID-19 and lift pandemic-related curbs because experts say it could face a viral resurgence later this year like many other countries. Recently, North Korea's state media has repeatedly said it’s intensifying and upgrading its anti-epidemic systems to guard against coronavirus subvariants and other diseases like monkeypox that are occurring in other countries.

“The organizational power and unity unique to the society of (North Korea) is fully displayed in the struggle to bring forward a victory in the emergency anti-epidemic campaign by fully executing the anti-epidemic policies of the party and the state,” the official Korean Central News Agency said Saturday.