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Thursday, March 28, 2024

North Korea lifts virus lockdown of border city: KCNA

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Seoul, South Korea | North Korea said Friday it had lifted a three-week lockdown that was imposed on a border city after a defector believed to be carrying the coronavirus sneaked back into the country.

The secretive nation has insisted it has had no cases of COVID-19 — a claim international experts say is unlikely, given the spread of the disease around the world.

Authorities in July said they were imposing a lockdown on Kaesong city when a 24-year-old man, arrested after crossing the heavily fortified border from the South, was found to be displaying symptoms of the coronavirus.

"It has been proved the situation of anti-epidemic work has been kept and controlled stably", Leader Kim Jong Un was quoted as saying by the state-run KCNA news agency.

Kim "expressed thanks… to the people in the locked-down area for having remained faithful to the measures taken by our Party and government, despite the inconvenience in their living under quarantine".

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North Korea's medical infrastructure is seen as woefully inadequate for dealing with any large-scale outbreak.

Pyongyang closed its borders in late January — the first country in the world to do so — in a bid to protect itself against the coronavirus.

It imposed tough restrictions that put thousands of people into isolation, but analysts say the country is unlikely to have avoided the contagion.

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