North Korea announces strict vigilance on land border amid Omicron fears: Reports

Amid the deteriorating economic condition of North Korea, Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un has again announced strict vigilance on its international borders, The Korea Herald reported on Sunday. The announcement from Kim Jong-un came after South Africa has reported several cases of the new COVID-19 variant, Omicron in the last five days. This promoted several other countries to either shut down their borders or invoke strict restrictions on foreign footfall. 

B.1.1.529 is more transmissible than Delta: Kim Jong-un

According to a report published by the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), Kim Jong-un called the newly COVID variant "five-time more contagious" than the delta variant. Irrespective of North Korea's Supreme leader's claim, the World Health Organisation (WHO) on Sunday declared that the data is “insufficient” for the global health body to establish whether the variant of concern B.1.1.529 is more transmissible than Delta. "The country's officials and other "workers" are concentrating all efforts on "thoroughly ensuring perfection" in the emergency virus control and prevention campaign, KCNA quoted Kim Jong-un as saying. 

Since early last year, North Korea has tightened border controls to prevent a coronavirus pandemic on its soil. Earlier, there were some hints that it may be loosening the prohibitions, with commerce with China increasing dramatically in recent months. Late in September, the World Health Organization (WHO) restarted shipments of medical supplies from China to North Korea. In the first week of November, it began cross-border train freight shipments with China, ending the longstanding pandemic trade embargo.

However, the emergence of the new COVID-19 variant, Omicron, has added woes to the country's "crawling economy". On November 18, he had also called for strengthening the country's self-reliance in the next five years despite knowing the fact it needs technological support in order to fulfil his vision. "The responsibilities set forth by our party are broad, and difficulties are piling up, but we cannot wait until all conditions are met," Kim was quoted by the news agency as saying. "We need to undauntedly move forward along our development path with only our strength," added the supreme leader. Besides, Kim Jong-un on several occasions bolstered the country's strict measures in dealing with the COVID virus. According to him, he has managed to weed out the deadly pandemic from the country, but, experts widely doubt his claims.

Know more about the Omicron variant

According to WHO, the first case of a new COVID variant was detected in South Africa and has also been detected in travellers from Hong Kong and Botswana. It is worth mentioning that South Africa has reported nearly 200 cases of Coronavirus in the past two weeks ago. However, with the emergence of the newly detected variant, the cases in the country went up to 2,465. Notably, the difference of nearly 2,400 cases was reported within a gap of three days. The scientific community was concerned with the transmissibility of the new variant as it went from barely detected to spreading among the majority of the samples.

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