North Korea is in a “major national emergency” after the country identified its first official case of COVID-19 on Thursday (May 12).
The case of Omicron was detected in the country’s capital Pyongyang and leader Kim Jong Un, appearing on Korean TV in a medical mask for the first time, has since ordered all cities and counties to go into lockdown.
Although North Korea had not reported any COVID-19 cases before this, experts highly doubt that the nation of 25 million completely avoided the virus.
North Korea is one of the only countries in the world not to have vaccinated its population against COVID-19.