North Korea confirms first Covid-19 death

SEOUL: North Korea confirmed its first Covid-19 death on Friday, saying fever was spreading "explosively" nationwide and tens of thousands of people were being isolated after falling sick.

The insular country only reported its first Covid cases Thursday, saying it was moving into a "maximum emergency epidemic prevention system" after patients in the capital Pyongyang tested positive for the Omicron variant.

North Korea has been under a rigid coronavirus blockade since the start of the pandemic in 2020, but with massive Omicron outbreaks in all neighbouring countries, experts said it was only a matter of time before Covid snuck in. "A fever whose cause couldn´t be identified explosively spread nationwide from late April," the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said.