North Korea said on Friday that the country’s first outbreak of Covid began with patients touching “alien things” near the border with South Korea, apparently blaming the neighbor for the wave of infections.
Announcing the results of an investigation, Pyongyang ordered people to keep an eye out for “alien things coming on the wind and other weather phenomena and balloons in areas along the demarcation line and borders,” the official KCNA news agency said.
The agency did not directly mention South Korea, but North Korean defectors and activists have been flying balloons from the country for decades, which cross the border to the north carrying leaflets and humanitarian aid.
South Korea’s Unification Ministry, which handles matters between the two countries, said there was “no possibility” the virus could have entered the North through leaflets sent across the border.
According to KCNA, an 18-year-old soldier and a five-year-old kindergarten student came into contact with unidentified materials on a hillside surrounding barracks and residential neighborhoods in eastern Kumgang County in early April. , showed symptoms and then received a positive diagnosis for the coronavirus.
According to KCNA, all other fever cases reported in the country through mid-April were due to other illnesses, but the agency did not provide further details.
“It’s hard to believe North Korea’s claim, scientifically speaking, as the possibility of the virus spreading through objects is quite low,” said Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states that the risk of people becoming infected with Covid from contact with contaminated surfaces or objects is considered very low, although it is possible.
The North also said the first two patients touched the unspecified objects in early April, but the first time a group of defectors sent balloons across the border this year was later that month in western Gimpo.
The first time North Korea admitted to a Covid outbreak was months after relaxing border closures applied since early 2020 to resume freight train operations with China.
But it would have been difficult for Pyongyang to point the finger at China, said Lim Eul-chul, a professor at Kyungnam University’s Institute of Far Eastern Studies.
“If they concluded that the virus was from China, they would have to reinforce quarantine measures in the border area in yet another setback to North Korea-China trade,” Lim said.
North Korea reported 4,570 more people with fever symptoms on Friday, with the total number of fever patients recorded since late April at 4.74 million. Experts suspect underreporting in these figures, released by the government-controlled press.
Pyongyang has been announcing the number of fever patients daily without specifying whether they have contracted Covid, apparently due to a lack of tests to detect the disease.
