Unmotivated lockdown in Pyongyang . This afternoon - Italian morning - in the North Korean capital the order was suddenly given to all citizens to go home.
This was announced by NK News, a site specialized on North Korean events. The reason is not known, some sources have reported of a "national lockdown", others of a "national problem", speaking of "long queues" of people waiting for buses or any other useful means of returning to their homes.
The word lockdown evokes Covid-19 all over the world, and it is certainly not unlikely that the Omicron variant has appeared in Pyongyang , creating several problems in what - together with Eritrea - is the only country in the world not to have started no vaccination campaign , rejecting both the vaccines offered by the WHO and those made available by China, its historic ally.
On the other hand , North Korea has so far not reported any infection to the WHO . At the end of April, the rail freight link was suspended after the border town of Dandong, on the Chinese side, registered some infections by starting mass tests and lockdowns. The local newspaper "Rodong Sinmun" continues to tell the population to wear masks and sanitize themselves frequently to stop the virus.
The order to shut up at home is not new in Pyongyang : it is usually decreed due to the high levels of pollution arriving from China and which often also reaches Seoul or for the yellow dust from apocalyptic scenarios of the sand of the Gobi desert .
(Unioneonline / L)