What we know (and don't know) about North Korea's Covid outbreak

What we know (and don't know) about North Korea's Covid outbreak
By Nectar Gan, Gawon Bae and Helen Regan, CNN
Updated 0718 GMT (1518 HKT) May 14, 2022
North Korea declares national emergency over reported Covid-19 cases 02:12
(CNN)North Korea's first-reported Covid-19 outbreak is the "greatest turmoil" to befall the country since its founding more than 70 years ago, according to its leader Kim Jong Un, as the isolated and impoverished nation scrambles to curb the spread of a highly transmissible virus that risks causing a major humanitarian crisis.

North Korea reported 21 more deaths and 174,440 new "fever cases" Friday, according to state media KCNA, though it did not specify how many of the deaths and cases were linked to Covid, likely due to the country's extremely limited testing capacity.
The climbing death toll and surging "fever cases" come after North Korea said Thursday it had identified its first ever case of Covid-19 -- an alarming development for a country with one of the world's most fragile public health systems and a largely unvaccinated population.
But given the opaque nature of the regime and the country's isolation from the world -- a trend that has only exacerbated since the pandemic -- it is extremely difficult to assess the real situation on the ground.
Foreign diplomats and aid workers had fled North Korea en masse in 2021 due to shortages of goods and "unprecedented" restrictions on daily life, making it all the more impossible to obtain information from the country other than through official state media.
But North Korean state media reports have been vague, and many important questions remain unanswered, including the country's vaccine coverage and the lockdown's impact on the livelihood of its 25 million people.
Here is what we know, and what we don't know about the outbreak:
How did the outbreak emerge?
North Korean authorities have not announced the cause of the outbreak.
North Korea's borders have been tightly sealed since January 2020 to keep the virus at bay, making the so-called "hermit nation" even more isolated from the world. It even declined invitations to send teams to compete at the Tokyo and Beijing Olympics, citing the threat of Covid-19.
And as new variants began to emerge, it stepped-up those efforts, cutting off nearly all trade with China -- the country's biggest trading partner and economic lifeline for the Kim regime -- with imports from Beijing dropping 99% from September to October 2020.
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/05/14/asia/north-korea-covid-outbreak-explainer-intl-hnk/index.html