Today, Saturday, state media said that North Korea has dropped the face mask mandate and other rules for social distancing, as leader Kim Jong Un declared victory over Covid-19 this week, three months after its first recognition of “Covid-19”. The outbreak of the virus in the isolated country.
Kim chaired a meeting on the coronavirus on Wednesday and ordered the lifting of the maximum anti-epidemic measures imposed in May, adding that North Korea must maintain a “strong steel barrier against the epidemic.”
Under the shift to a “normal” anti-epidemic system from a “top-level” system, North Korea has dropped the obligation to wear masks and other rules such as limiting service time for commercial and public facilities in all areas except border areas, according to the official KCNA news agency.
According to Reuters, North Korea recommended that those with respiratory symptoms should wear masks, and urged people to be vigilant against “unnatural things” that Pyongyang has described as the cause of the infection.
North Korea has blamed the coronavirus outbreak on “stranger things” near its border with the South, with Kim’s sister Kim Yo Jong vowing “mortal revenge” for causing the outbreak.
For decades, North Korean defectors and activists in the South have been flying balloons carrying anti-Pyongyang leaflets to the North, sometimes with food, medicine, money and other things.
North Korea has never confirmed how many people have contracted COVID, apparently due to a lack of means for widespread testing, and only reporting daily numbers of patients with fever. The number rose to about 4.77 million, and North Korea has not recorded any such new cases since late last month.
North Korea’s announcement on COVID comes despite there is no known vaccine program. Instead, it says, it has relied on lockdowns, locally produced medicines, and what Kim calls “Korea’s beneficial socialist system.”
Infectious disease experts have cast doubt on North Korea’s claims of progress, citing a lack of independent data.
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