North Korea on Saturday reported no new cases of fever for the first time since it suddenly admitted its first domestic COVID-19 outbreak and put its 26 million people under draconian restrictions in May. There have been widespread outside doubts about the accuracy of North Korea’s statistics, as reported casualties are very low and its daily fever cases have fallen very rapidly recently. Some experts say North Korea has likely manipulated the scale of illness and death to help leader Kim Jong Un maintain absolute control amid mounting economic difficulties. The North’s anti-epidemic center reported via state media that it had found zero fever patients in the past 24 hours, keeping the country’s total caseload at about 4.8 million. Its death toll remains at 74, with a fatality rate of 0.0016% which would be the lowest in the world if true. Despite the claimed zero cases, it’s unclear if and how soon North Korea will officially declare victory over COVID-19 and lift containment measures related to the pandemic, because experts say it could face a resurgence of the virus. virus later this year like many other countries. North Korea’s state media recently reported that it is ramping up and upgrading its anti-epidemic systems to protect against sub-variants of the coronavirus and other diseases such as monkeypox that are emerging in other countries. KIM JONG UN STILL NOT READY TO CONDUCT NUCLEAR TEST, EXPERTS SAY In this photo released on June 28, 2022 by the North Korean government, North Korean employees disinfect a facility at an underground store in Pyongyang, North Korea. (Korea Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP, File) “The organizational strength and unity unique to (North Korea’s) society are on full display in the struggle to promote a victory in the emergency anti-epidemic campaign,” the official Korean Central News Agency said Saturday. North Korea’s zero cases could be symbolic in its efforts to establish the image of Kim as a leader who has suppressed the epidemic much faster than other countries. Kim would need such credentials to muster greater public support to overcome economic difficulties caused by pandemic-related border closures, UN sanctions and his own mismanagement, observers say. “In North Korea, public health care and politics cannot be separated from each other, and this aspect has been revealed again in the COVID-19 outbreak,” said Ahn Kyung-su, head of DPRKHEALTH.ORG, a health-focused website. issues in North Korea. “Since they started with manipulated data, they are now ending the outbreak with manipulated data.” North Korea was widely expected to claim zero cases as the daily volume of fever cases fell in recent days – there were three reported cases on Friday and 11 on Thursday – from a peak of around 400,000 a day in May. The country, which lacks testing kits, has identified only a fraction of its 4.8 million fevers as confirmed cases of COVID-19. “Realistically speaking, hundreds of thousands of daily fever cases becoming zero in less than three months is something impossible,” said Lee Yo Han, a professor at Ajou University Graduate School of Public Health in South Korea. LA COUNTY REJECTS PLAN TO REIMPLEMENT MASKS ORDER, IMPOSING REDUCTION IN COVID CASES On Saturday, July 30, 2022, North Korea reported no new cases of fever for the first time since it suddenly admitted its first domestic outbreak of COVID-19 and put its 26 million people under more draconian restrictions in May. (AP Photo/Cha Song Ho, File) Many outside experts earlier worried that the North’s outbreak would have catastrophic consequences because most of its residents are believed to be unvaccinated and about 40 percent are reportedly malnourished. But now, activists and defectors with contacts in North Korea say they haven’t heard of anything like a humanitarian disaster happening in the North. They say the country’s outbreak has also peaked. In a sign of easing of the outbreak, North Korea this week held mass public events without masks in its capital, Pyongyang, where thousands of elderly Korean War veterans and others gathered from across the country to mark the 69th anniversary of the end of 1950-53 war. During an anniversary ceremony, Kim hugged and shook hands with some veterans before taking group photos with other attendees. None were wearing masks, according to state media photos. Shin Young-jeon, a professor of preventive medicine at Hanyang University in Seoul, said North Korea will know that zero cases does not mean they have no COVID-19 patients, because there are likely asymptomatic cases. He said North Korea is not likely to announce that it has officially defeated the pandemic anytime soon because of concerns about a resurgence. “North Korea’s state media has already used expressions as if they are winning the war against viruses. The only other expression they can use now is to declare that the coronavirus has been completely eliminated from its territory,” Shin said. “But if new cases appear again, North Korea would lose face.” The only route for North Korea’s new virus to spread from abroad is likely to be China, its main ally that shares a long, porous border with the country, and North Korea would likely find it difficult to declare victory over the pandemic until it China does, Li said. . BA.5 THE OMICRON VARIANT MAY LEAD TO A HIGHER RISK OF RECONTAMINATION AND SERIOUS OUTCOMES, COMPARED TO OTHER VARIANTS In this photo provided by the North Korean government, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, center, visits a pharmacy in Pyongyang, North Korea on May 15, 2022. (Korea Central News Agency/Korean News Agency via AP , File) In this photo provided by the North Korean government, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, center, visits a pharmacy in Pyongyang, North Korea on May 15, 2022.
The North Korea-China border has been largely closed for more than 2 ½ years, except for a few months when it reopened earlier this year. Some observers say the North’s heightened pandemic response has given Kim a tool to bolster his authoritarian rule amid public complaints about long-standing restrictions. They say North Korea could report a small number of fever cases again in the coming days. Foreign experts are struggling to estimate the true death toll in North Korea. They note that the North’s lack of testing kits would also make it nearly impossible for the country to determine whether elderly people or others with underlying illnesses died from COVID-19 or something else. CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP Shin, the university professor, stood by his previous study that predicted North Korea would likely have 100,000-150,000 deaths. He said he used South Korean data showing the death rate for unvaccinated people for the micron variant, whose outbreak North Korea admitted to in May, was 0.6 percent. Other experts say the North’s deaths would be several thousand at most. They said higher death tolls must have been detected by North Korean monitoring groups.