For the first time since May, Pyongyang announces no more incidents of "sickness."
In recent days, Korea has hosted large-scale ceremonies where many person's identities have been revealed, and the public case count has significantly decreased.
For the first time since unexpectedly declaring its first internal COVID-19 epidemic in mid-May and imposing stringent measures to stop the virus' spread, North Korea has not reported any additional "illness" instances.
State media stated on Saturday that the North's official emergency anti-epidemic center reported having no recent cases of fever.
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It stated that there were roughly 4.8 million cases overall and that 99.99 percent of patients had made a full recovery. According to official statistics, 74 people have perished from the virus, making the North's death rate - at 0.0016 percent - the lowest in the world.
Achieving such a low death rate, according to Shin Young-jeon, a professor at Hanyang University's medical school in Seoul, is almost "impossible."
Given that older people have a higher risk of dying from COVID-19, mostly at home, and political reasons that the leadership does not want to publicize a significant death toll, he wrote in an analysis published on Friday, "it could result from a combination of a lack of testing capacity, counting issues, and the fact that old people have higher odds of dying from COVID-19."
specialists in infectious diseasessince the outset have questioned the accuracy of official reports on the outbreak in North Korea; the World Health Organization (WHO) stated last month that it believed the situation was deteriorating rather than improving due to the lack of independent data.
Many individuals were also worried that an outbreak in the small nation of 26 million people would have disastrous repercussions because to the low vaccination rate, widespread undernutrition, and the deteriorated state of the healthcare system.
According to the official Korean Central News Agency, "the organization power and unity particular to the society of (North Korea) are 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."
celebrations at mass
Pyongyang said earlier this month that it was on a course to "finally defuse" the outbreak despite the fact that its neighbors were seeing an increase in cases caused by Omicron subvariants.
in comparison to a peak of almost 400,000 cases per day in May, the daily number of cases has significantly decreased in recent days, with three reported cases on Friday and 11 on Thursday. Due to a lack of test kits, the nation has only recognized a small percentage of individuals as verified COVID-19 cases.
North Korea hosted massive public celebrations for the 69th celebration of the end of the Korean War last week in the country's capital, Pyongyang, as a sign of an easing tension. Thousands of elderly Korean War veterans and others came from all around the country to attend. Few people could be seen wearing masks in photos that were posted on official media.
According to Shin Young-jeon, a professor of preventive medicine at Seoul's Hanyang University, North Korea is aware that the prevalence of asymptomatic cases means that zero cases do not necessarily mean that COVID-19 does not exist. As a result, North Korea is unlikely to declare the pandemic officially over any time soon.
"The state-run media in North Korea has already made claims that it is triumphant in the war against viruses. The only other phrase they have left to say is that the coronavirus has been totally eradicated from its region, according to Shin. But if fresh cases crop up, North Korea would look worse.
According to Lee Yo Han, a professor at South Korea's Ajou University Graduate School of Public Health, the nation will likely find it challenging to declare victory over the pandemic until China does so because of its lengthy, porous border with North Korea's key ally, China.
Except for a brief period when it reopened earlier this year, the North Korea-China border has been mainly closed for more than two and a half years. It is yet unknown whether It'll open up again.
China is now dealing with a number of COVID-19 outbreaks in different places throughout the nation, but it is steadfast in its zero-COVID strategy of eradicating the virus everywhere it manifests.
Unification Ministry of South Korea, which manages cross-border ties, official: "Since the state media has also been discussing about variants, whether or when they would soften the virus rules and relieve border lockdown has to be seen."
Up until the last patient had fully recovered, a quick mobile treatment force, according to KCNA, was striving to "identify and stamp out the epidemic."
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