North Korea: 6 dead following Covid outbreak
The country has declared "maximum emergency measures," and 187,800 people have been "isolated and treated" after showing signs of fever.
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A student’s hands are disinfected at a school in Pyongyang, North Korea (AP)
North Korea has announced its first Covid-19 deaths amid an "explosive" outbreak of fever, state media reported on Friday, one day after the country admitted for the first time that it was dealing with a coronavirus outbreak.
Six people died and one of them tested positive for the highly transmissible Omicron variant, according to the official KCNA news agency.
Confirmation of North Korea's first Covid-19 deaths came after Pyongyang declared "maximum emergency measures" to combat an outbreak in the capital.
The country has declared "maximum emergency measures," and 187,800 people have been "isolated and treated" after showing signs of fever.
Experts believe that none - or very few - of the country's 26 million people have been immunized, and there are growing fears that a large outbreak will quickly overwhelm the country's under-resourced health services.
It is worth mentioning that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un declared a nationwide state of emergency on Thursday, calling the outbreak the "gravest national emergency."
North Korea had insisted that it had not recorded a single case of Covid since closing its borders at the start of the pandemic more than two years ago.
