Those daily cases peaked at more than 392,000 on May 15, prompting health experts to warn of an inevitable crisis.
The World Health Organization has cast doubts on North Korea's claims, saying last month it believed the situation was getting worse, not better, amid an absence of independent data.Pyongyang's declaration of victory comes despite rolling out no known vaccine program.Instead, the country says it relied on lockdowns, homegrown medicine treatments, and what Kim called the "advantageous Korean-style socialist system."
The North has said it was running intensive medical checks nationwide, with daily PCR tests on water collected in borderline areas among the measures.It also said it has been developing new methods to better detect the virus and its variants, as well as other infectious diseases, such as monkeypox.Kim's sister, Kim Yo Jong, said the North Korean leader himself had suffered from fever symptoms, and blamed leaflets from South Korea for causing the outbreak, KCNA reported."Even though he was seriously ill with a high fever, he could not lie down for a moment thinking about the people he had to take care of until the end in the face of the anti-epidemic war," she said in a speech praising his efforts.On Thursday, South Korea's Unification Ministry said in a statement it had "strong regrets" over North Korea "repeatedly making groundless claims" about how Covid-19 had arrived in the country.