North Korea reports first Covid-19 death due to Omicron variant

North Korea said on Friday that six people have died and 350,000 have been treated since April for an “obscure febrile disease”, a day after the isolated country confirmed the presence of coronavirus within its borders for the first time. State news agency KCNA reported that 18,000 people had been identified on Thursday as having “a fever whose cause couldn’t be identified” and 187,800 were in quarantine. Authorities said one of the dead was infected with Covid-19, adding that the person had contracted the highly transmissible BA.2 Omicron coronavirus sub-variant.