N/Korea records 2m fever cases week after COVID confirmed

North Korea has registered almost two million fever patients one week after the confirmation of its first official coronavirus case.

On Wednesday, another 262,000 people with fever symptoms were recorded, state media reported on Thursday.

The total so far stood at almost 2 million, out of those, 1.2 million people were said to have already recovered.

The number of deaths rose from one to 63, North Korea had almost 26 million inhabitants.

According to experts, the country does not have sufficient testing capacities to ascertain whether people are suffering from COVID-19, and therefore reports fevers instead.

The World Health Organisation assumed that there had not yet been countrywide vaccination in the country, which was all but sealed off from the rest of the world.

Meanwhile, Pyongyang only officially confirmed its first cases of COVID-19 on May 12.

It had been following a zero-COVID strategy for the last two years, haven closed its borders early in the pandemic to prevent the virus entering the country.

Now, however, the government had imposed a country-wide lockdown in order to slow the spread.

The government had also launched information campaigns warning people of the dangers of the Omicron variant and offering treatment advice and rules for avoiding infection.