North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has declared victory over COVID-19, while his sister has admitted to suffering from “fever” during the outbreak.
Since North Korea acknowledged that an outbreak of the Omicron virus had occurred in May, it reported around 4.8 million “cases of fever” in its population of 26 million – but only identified a fraction of them as COVID-19[feminine].
He claimed the outbreak had been slowing for weeks and only 74 people had died.
It is reported that Kim has now ordered the relaxation of preventive measures – just three months after acknowledging there had been cases.
North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported on Thursday that Kim’s sister, Kim Yo Jong, said her brother suffered from “fever” and blamed the North Korean outbreak on leaflets. flown across the border from South Korea.
South Korea’s Unification Ministry, which handles inter-Korean affairs, issued a statement expressing deep regret for the North’s ‘extremely disrespectful and threatening comments’ which were based on ‘ridiculous allegations’ about the source of its infections. .
According to KCNA, in an address to the nation, Kim said, “Since we started carrying out the maximum emergency anti-epidemic campaign (in May), the daily fever cases which have reached hundreds of thousands during of the early days of the outbreak was reduced to minus 90,000 a month later and steadily falling, and not a single case of fever suspected to be linked to the evil virus has been reported since July 29.”
‘Virus-free zone’
“For a country that has yet to administer a single shot of vaccine, our success in overcoming the spread of the disease in such a short time and restoring public health security and making our country a clean and virus-free zone is an incredible miracle that would go down in global public health history,” he added.
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“A joke”
During Wednesday’s meeting, Kim Yo Jong called the country’s virus crisis a “hysterical farce” launched by South Korea to escalate the confrontation.
She claimed her brother suffered from fever symptoms and praised his “energetic and meticulous guidance” for bringing a “historic miracle” in the fight against COVID-19.
“The (South Korean) puppets are always pushing leaflets and filthy objects into our territory. We must firmly counter them,” she said.
“We have already considered various counter-action plans, but our counter-measure must be lethal retaliation.”
