North Korea tests river and lake water to prevent COVID-19

A North Korean official inspects a pharmacy amid a strong outbreak of COVID-19 – Photo: KCNA

North Korea has declared a national emergency and is in a nationwide lockdown to combat its first outbreak of COVID-19.

Currently, North Korean authorities are stepping up testing and disinfection across the country, after reporting a “positive trend” in disease control on May 22.

According to KCNA, the “positive trend” included that the initial rapid spread of the virus had decreased after being brought under control, and the number of recovered cases increased daily nationwide.

Specifically, North Korea’s anti-epidemic agencies are collecting samples from many sources to check whether there are areas where COVID-19 infections have appeared.

“Emergency departments at all levels prioritize testing samples collected in rivers and lakes, while disinfecting hundreds of thousands of cubic meters of wastewater and thousands of tons of waste every day, and controlling investigate and analyze these samples,” KCNA said.

KCNA did not specify North Korea’s testing methods.

On May 27, KCNA said that North Korea recorded about 100,460 people with fever symptoms in the past 24 hours, much lower than the number of nearly 400,000 cases 10 days ago.

Since April, North Korea has had more than 3.27 million people with fever symptoms out of a total of about 25 million people across the country, including 69 deaths.

In the context of many cases with fever symptoms, newspapers in North Korea have published articles advising on methods of reducing fever such as drinking herbal tea, gargling with salt water, taking pain relievers such as ibuprofen.

Meanwhile, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has also criticized officials for not doing a good job of distributing the national drug stockpile.