North Korea says fever cases in locked-down province were flu
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[August 26, 2022]
By Hyonhee Shin and Josh Smith
SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea said on
Friday it had confirmed that cases of unknown fever reported near its
border with China were patients with the flu, state media reported.
On Thursday the country said that it had locked down the area and
mobilised medical teams after four fever cases were reported from
Ryanggang Province, but that it was not COVID-19, over which the country
declared victory this month.
"It was revealed that all of the fever patients in the Ryanggang
Province were patients with the flu," KCNA news agency reported on
Friday, saying experts conducted clinical symptoms observation,
epidemiological relationship investigation and nucleic acid tests.
North Korea has never confirmed how many people caught COVID-19,
apparently lacking the means to conduct widespread testing.
Instead, it reported daily numbers of patients with fever, which
totalled some 4.77 million, and said there have not been any new such
cases since July 29.
In a separate dispatch, KCNA carried a Russian state media interview
with Moscow's ambassador to North Korea, Alexandr Matsegora, detailing
the COVID situation in the isolated country.
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![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2022/Aug/26/images/ads/current/chicagostreet_lda_FAIR_2022.png) Matsegora said he had raised the
possibility that the virus had come from China, rather than through
anti-North leaflets flown from South Korea as Pyongyang argued.
But North Koreans dismissed that view, presenting him data that
showed the northern regions bordering China were much less affected
by the outbreak than the southern areas, he said, without providing
numbers.
Reuters was unable to verify North Korea or
Matsegora's assertions, and most foreign embassies and international
agencies have left the country because of the pandemic.
Seoul's Unification Ministry, which handles cross-border ties, has
denied Pyongyang's claim as groundless, and said on Friday that a
resurgence of COVID cannot be ruled out in the North.
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Matsegora expressed concerns over escalation between the two Koreas,
with the North vowing "deadly retaliation" over the leaflet-sending
activity in the South, which he said Pyongyang "compared with the
use of biochemical weapon."
"The situation on the Korean peninsula will be further aggravated
with the issue of COVID-19 as a momentum," he said.
NK News, a website specialised in North Korea, reported on Thursday
that the country might be preparing to reopen the border in the near
future, citing several unnamed sources, though similar reports have
proved premature in the past.
(Reporting by Josh Smith; editing by Richard Pullin and Gerry Doyle)
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