The city has been put under total lockdown and isolated from the rest of the districts in North Korea after a person reported of possible contraction of Coronavirus.
North Korea reports its first suspected Coronavirus case in the country from the city of Kaesong. The country’s leader Kim Jong Un put the city under ”total lockdown” since he received reports on Friday afternoon’that a person might have contracted the virus.
If declared positive, the suspected person would be the first confirmed case in North Korea officially since the outbreak of the pandemic. According to the state media, the respiratory secretions and blood samples show a possibility of the person being infected by Coronavirus.
According to internal sources, the person is believed to have illegally crossed the border from South Korea as the city of Kaesong is close to the border of South Korea. A city with over 200,000 people, it is heavily sealed across the border with strict monitoring in place.
During an emergency meeting in Pyongyang, a ”state of emergency” has been declared in Kaesong and it is reported of a ”top class alert” being issued, according to the internal state media Korea Central News Agency (KCNA).
It is also reported that Kim has taken up preemptive measures to totally isolate the city to contain the spread of the virus within Friday afternoon (July 24). The state media also reported of a possible loophole in the guarding of the border area in Kaesong by a military unit and have discussed of implementing ”severe punishment”.
North Korea claims the suspected person might have allegedly crossed the borders and might be the person who earlier escaped North Korea 20 years ago. However experts say, there might be a least possibility of an ”illegal entry” as the borders are totally sealed and any movement between the Koreas can only happen with with North Korea’s open border with China.
However, there has been no official response to the allegation by the South Korean government so far. According to Leif-Eric Easley, Professor at Ewha university in Seoul, ”It’s a blame game to shift the blame on Seoul trying to deviate away from China and Pyongyang”.
North Korea is one of the few countries which has not reported a single case of Coronavirus so far. The country had sealed its border with strict monitoring and banned foreign tourists and had even put their health officials and workers on the frontline to quarantine anyone suspected of the contracting the virus.
According to experts, North Korea might face ”extreme challenges” in case of an outbreak of Coronavirus with its less standard healthcare system.
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