The state emergency epidemic prevention headquarters announced on June 30 the results of investigation into the entrance channels of COVID-19 which rapidly spread across the DPRK from late April.

It organized an investigation committee comprising relevant professional institutions, suggested possibilities and hypotheses related to the paths of inflow of COVID-19 on a nationwide scale and pushed an elaborate epidemiological survey and scientific and criminalistic investigation.

As a result of the investigation, such issues were raised that symptoms of pyrexia began to appear among several persons on their way to Pyongyang from the Ipho-ri area of Kumgang County, Kangwon Province, in around mid-April and those with fever rapidly increased among people who contacted them and that people developed fever as a group for the first time in the area.

It was also confirmed that people in other areas and units across the country till mid-April contracted fever due to other diseases and there were no such cases of developing fever in a group.

Accordingly, a scientific conclusion was drawn that Ipho-ri of Kumgang County was where COVID-19 broke out for the first time in the country.

The investigation committee comprising competent officials and experts in the relevant unit conducted a many-sided, anatomical and comprehensive survey and analysis of the factors which might be the incoming path of the malignant virus. According to them, it was discovered that an 18-year-old serviceman surnamed Kim and a five-year-old kindergartener surnamed Wi contacted strange things in the hills near the army barracks and residential area in Ipho-ri in early April. And as they developed clinical features which could be seen as early symptoms of COVID-19 and their novel coronavirus antibody test proved positive, it reached a clear consensus on the cause of infection with COVID-19.

The committee scientifically and finally corroborated the fact that the malignant virus made inroads into the Ipho-ri area of Kumgang County for the first time and its cause according to the clinical features revealed among the people with fever, epidemiological links and the results of their antibody tests.

It also analyzed the whole story of how the malignant virus that came into Ipho-ri spread in all areas of the country at the same time.

The non-permanent state emergency anti-epidemic deliberation committee synthesized and analyzed the identification of the inflow channel of stealth omicron mutated virus BA.2 by the investigation committee and estimated that it was correctly identified in criminalistic terms and scientifically and technologically, and reported the results to the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea and the Cabinet.

The headquarters saw that as the influx route of COVID-19 was confirmed, emergency instructions were issued on further intensifying anti-epidemic steps including the strengthening of all-people observation and report systems of seeing with vigilance any strange things that flow in by such weather events as wind and on the balloons in the areas along the military demarcation line and border areas, clearly identifying their sources and reporting them as soon as they are discovered and the full collection and strict disposal of them by the emergency anti-epidemic corps.