State media disclosed that North Korea verified on Friday that cases of unexplained fever reported along the border with China were caused by flu.
"It was determined that every fever patient in the province of Ryanggang had flu," the KCNA news agency reported on Friday, citing clinical symptom observation, epidemiological relationship study, and nucleic acid testing.
After four fever cases were reported from Ryanggang Province, the country announced on Thursday that it had quarantined the area and mobilized medical professionals, but that it was not COVID-19, over which the country declared victory this month.
North Korea has never confirmed the number of people infected with COVID-19, presumably due to a lack of testing resources.
Instead, it gave daily totals of approximately 4.77 million individuals with fever and stated that there have been no new cases since July 29.
Separately, KCNA published a Russian official media interview with Moscow's ambassador to North Korea, Alexandr Matsegora, in which he discussed the COVID situation in the isolated nation.
Matsegora stated that he had presented the notion that the virus originated in China, as opposed to South Korea's anti-North propaganda pamphlets.
The North Koreans, however, refuted this viewpoint, giving him data indicating that the northern districts bordering China were significantly less afflicted by the virus than the southern ones, he stated without citing numbers.
Reporters were unable to confirm North Korea or Matsegora's claims, as the majority of foreign embassies and international organizations had fled the country because of the pandemic.
Friday, Seoul's Unification Ministry, which oversees cross-border relations, stated that a COVID comeback in North Korea cannot be ruled out.
Matsegora expressed alarm at the rise of tensions between the two Koreas, with the North threatening "deadly retaliation" over the South's leaflet-sending activity, which Pyongyang "likened to the use of biological weapons," according to Matsegora.
The situation on the Korean peninsula would deteriorate more as a result of the COVID-19 problem, he stated.
NK News, a North Korea-focused website, stated on Thursday that the country may be ready to reopen the border in the near future, citing many unnamed sources. However, such reports have proven to be premature in the past.
