North Korea said on Friday six people died and nearly 190,000 are under quarantine following a rapid spread of fever across the nation in recent weeks, a day after it first acknowledged a COVID-19 outbreak in a largely unvaccinated population.
It wasn't immediately clear how many of the cases were COVID-19. The North said one of the six people who died was confirmed to have been infected with the omicron variant.
Experts say a failure to slow infections could have serious consequences because the country has a poor health care system and its 26 million people are believed to be mostly unvaccinated.