Nothing sends chills into the spine of Kim Jong Un (leader of DPRK) than to have the deadly coronavirus take a foothold in his ill-equiped country that has been clobbered by crippling U.N. Sanctions.
But on Saturday, there were reports in the news that the Democratic Peoples’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) has indeed locked-down one of the border towns due to reports that people have indeed contracted the deadly coronavirus.
According to Xinhua News, DPRK locked down Kaesong City after someone contracted or showed symptoms of Covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. Kim Jong Un, the leader of North Korea declared a state of emergence in Kaesong in an attempt to curb the spread of covid-19 in his reclusive country.
The DPRK leader said he took the precautionary measure in an attempt to completely prevent the spread of the deadly virus by isolating every district and region in Kaesong city that have had suspected cases of covid-19.
North Korea’s Korea Central News Agency (KCNA) said the suspected covid-19 patient was defector of DPRK who recently returned from South Korea. The said patient was immediately put under mandatory quarantine at the border city in order to prevent the transmission of the deadly virus to the local inhabitants in North Korea.
It is worth noting that DPRK (North Korea) has not officially confirmed any case of covid-19 in the country despite the fact that the pandemic actually started in neighboring China. All China’s neighbors including Japan, South Korea, Russia and Vietnam have each reported at least several thousands of coronavirus cases.
By Saturday, covid-19 has infected more than 16 million people world-wide. Of which, at least 600,000 have succumbed to the deadly virus while more than 10 million covid-19 patients have made a full recovery so far.
The United States is by far the most affected country by this global pandemic with more than 4 million confirmed cases of covid-19 of which more than 150,000 have died so far. At least 2 million covid-19 patients have made a full recovery in the United States and have been discharged from hospital.
Donald Trump, the president of the United States had downplayed the dangers of covid-19 including refusing to wear a mask while in public. It is expected that Mr. Trump’s mishandling of this global pandemic may actually cost him an election later this year.