Umamah Bakharia

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has declared Covid victory after the country announces no new cases since late July.

Kim presided over a COVID meeting on Wednesday announced “victory … in the war against the malignant pandemic disease.”

His sister Kim Yo Jong also spoke at the Pyongyang meeting as she blamed the outbreak on anti-Pyongyang leaflets flown across the border by activists from South Korea.

“We must counter it toughly,” she said. Adding that, “We have already considered various counteraction plans, but our countermeasure must be a deadly retaliatory one.”

Since the Covid outbreak in 2020, North Korea for the most part kept its borders close. However in May, the isolated country revealed that it was battling an outbreak of the omicron variant and imposed a “maximum emergency epidemic prevention system”.

The nation has since reported no new cases of the virus since 29 July.