NK News learned about a five-day quarantine in the DPRK capital due to a "cold"

Colds and other infections are spreading in Pyongyang, the government said in a statement, instructing the capital not to leave the house until next week and to take temperature regularly.Authorities do not mention coronavirus

North Korean authorities announced a five-day quarantine in Pyongyang due to growing cases of respiratory diseases, the South Korean portal NK News writes, citing a government notice.

Residents of the North Korean capital are required to stay at home until the end of Sunday, January 29, and take their temperature several times a day. Measures have been introduced, the document says, due to the diseases spreading in the capital of the country, among which there is a cold, COVID-19 is not mentioned.

The portal announced its intention to introduce a multi-day quarantine in Pyongyang the day before, on January 24. At that time, an NK News source said that residents of the North Korean capital were buying food in a panic, which caused a noticeable increase in the length of traffic jams during the day. At the end of January, the number of temperature checkers at the entrance to shops and other public places in Pyongyang increased to two or three people, the source said.

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For the first time, the DPRK authorities reported a resident of the country with a coronavirus in May 2022. In the three months to the end of July, more than 4.77 million people were infected with the coronavirus in the country, Pyongyang then associated the increase in diseases with the launch of balloons from South Korea. Already in August, doctors did not identify a single patient. On August 11, the head of the DPRK announced victory over the infection.

At the end of January this year, a documentary was shown in North Korea, in which they called the result of the fight against coronavirus "a miracle on this planet" and "an unprecedented event" in the history of the country, Yonhap reported.

In recent weeks, the number of cases of COVID-19 has skyrocketed in China after the authorities lifted the "zero tolerance" policy towards the virus. Nearly 250 million people in China were infected with COVID-19 in December, Bloomberg reported. A group of scientists concluded that nine out of ten residents of Beijing, which has about 21.8 million people, will become ill with coronavirus by the end of January.

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