SEOUL: According to a government notice, on Wednesday, authorities in Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea, have ordered a five-day lockdown due to an increase in cases of an unknown respiratory illness.
According to NK News, which monitors North Korea, the notice did not mention Covid-19, but it stated that residents of the city were required to remain inside their homes until the end of Sunday and that they were required to submit to temperature checks multiple times per day.
The website said on Tuesday that people in Pyongyang seemed to be buying more things in anticipation of tougher measures. It is unclear whether additional lockdowns have been imposed elsewhere in the nation.
Despite acknowledging its first Covid-19 outbreak last year, North Korea declared victory over the virus by August.
The secretive nation didn't say how many people had Covid because, from what we can tell, it doesn't have the equipment to test a large number of people.
Instead, it reported the number of fever patients on a daily basis, which increased to approximately 4.77 million out of a population of approximately 25 million. However, since July 29, it has not reported such incidents.
State media have not yet reported on the lockdown order, but they have continued to report on measures taken to combat respiratory illnesses like the flu.
"So that all the working people observe anti-epidemic regulations voluntarily in their work and life," the city of Kaesong, near the border with South Korea, said on Tuesday, according to the state news agency KCNA.