North Korean leader Kim Jong Un placed the city of Kaesong near the border with South Korea under total lockdown after a person was found with suspected COVID-19 symptoms, The Associated Press reported on Saturday, citing state media.
If the person is officially declared a virus patient, he or she would be the North's first confirmed coronavirus case.
North Korea has insisted it has no single virus case on its territory, though that claim is being questioned by outside experts.
The lockdown was declared Friday afternoon. The Korean Central News Agency said the suspected case is a runaway who had fled to South Korea years ago before illegally crossing the border into the North early last week.
KCNA said respiratory secretion and blood tests showed the person “is suspected to have been infected” with the virus. It said the suspected case and others who were in contact as well as those who have been to Kaesong in the last five days were placed under quarantine.
Describing its anti-virus efforts as a “matter of national existence,” North Korea earlier this year shut down nearly all cross-border traffic, banned foreign tourists and mobilized health workers to quarantine anyone with symptoms. The Kaesong lockdown, however, is the first such known measure taken in a North Korean city to stem the pandemic.
In April, Kim disappeared from the public eye for several weeks, leading to speculations about his health. Among other things, it was speculated that he was in hiding due to fear of the coronavirus.
North Korean media subsequently published photos of Kim attending a ribbon cutting ceremony at a fertilizer factory.
Foreign experts say a coronavirus outbreak in North Korea could cause dire consequences because of its poor public health care infrastructure and chronic lack of medical supplies.
During an emergency Politburo meeting Saturday, Kim also declared a state of emergency in the Kaesong area and “clarified the determination of the Party Central Committee to shift from the state emergency anti-epidemic system to the maximum emergency system and issue a top-class alert,” KCNA said.
It quoted Kim as saying that there was “a critical situation in which the vicious virus could be said to have entered the country.”
Kim said he took “the preemptive measure of totally blocking Kaesong City and isolating each district and region from the other within July 24 afternoon just after receiving the report on it,” according to KCNA.