SEOUL — North Korea reported 2.24 million people “sickened with fever” as of Thursday evening — a big jump from last week when the secretive nation acknowledged its first suspected cases of COVID-19.
North Korean’s state-run Korean Central News Agency is still not referring to the outbreak as COVID-19, likely because there are no test kits to diagnose patients. South Korea-based analysts who have been closely monitoring the North for the last few decades suggest that the tally revealed by the reclusive regime each day may not be accurate, due to a lack of testing capabilities.
“There is no evidence that North Korea is using PCR test kits to determine COVID-19 patients, so no one outside can say for sure if it’s just fever or COVID-19 symptoms,” Philo Kim, associate professor at Seoul National University’s Institute for Peace and Unification Studies, told ABC News on Thursday evening.