FILE - People watch a TV screen showing a news program reporting with an image of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un
(Picture: AP)North Korea has claimed that its Covid outbreak started because people were touching “alien things” near the border with South Korea.
The isolated dictatorship ordered its people to “vigilantly deal with alien things coming by wind and other climate phenomena and balloons in the areas along the demarcation line and borders”.
The announcement did not directly mention South Korea but defectors and activists often fly balloons over the border carrying leaflets and humanitarian aid.
South Korea's unification ministry said there was “no possibility" of the virus entering the North through leaflets sent across the border.
North Korean state media claimed an 18-year-old soldier and a five-year-old who came into contact with the unidentified items in early April showed symptoms and later tested positive.
It alleged all other fever cases reported in the country until mid-April were due to other diseases, but it did not provide details.
“It's hard to believe North Korea's claim, scientifically speaking, given that the possibility of the virus spreading through objects is quite low," said Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul.
North Korean officials also said the two patients touched the objects in early April, but the first time this year a defectors’ group is known to have sent balloons across the border was in late April.
The balloons were also sent to a different region of the country.
North Korea reported 4,570 more people with fever symptoms on Friday, with the total number of fever patients recorded since late April at 4.74 million.
Pyongyang has been announcing the number of fever patients daily without specifying whether they have Covid, apparently due to a lack of testing kits.
After claiming to be Covid-free for more than two years, North Korea admitted in May that it was seeing an outbreak.
