MOSCOW, October 30 (RIA Novosti) — The British Embassy in North Korea has reported that the DPRK is enforcing a 21 day quarantine on foreigners entering the country, regardless of where they are travelling from.
The North Korean authorities “announced that anyone intending to enter the DPRK as an official visitor from a country the DPRK considers may have been affected by the Ebola virus will be put into quarantine for a period of 21 days from the date of departure from the affected area,” a statement on the UK government website says.
These measures strengthen the ban already declared on October 25 by the DPRK on tourists entering the country. The new measure directs that “diplomatic personnel and members of international organizations resident in DPRK will be quarantined in their respective missions,” and that other travelers will also be quarantined.
There have been no reported cases of Ebola in North Korea, nor in Asia. However, North Korea prefers not to take chances with any possible contagion, and in 2003 closed its borders completely due to the SARS outbreak.
Experiences of epidemics in recent years of SARS and bird flu make Asian nations particularly vigilant when it comes to possible outbreaks, and Time magazine reported yesterday that across the continent contingency plans are being made for the possibility of Ebola coming to Asia, using the knowledge gained from other contagions.
Hitoshi Oshitani, Professor of Virology at Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine in Sendai, Japan, told the magazine’s report, “The most likely scenario, if we have an imported case of Ebola, is that there will be some risk of having secondary cases, but I don’t think we will have a big outbreak at this point in time.”
Asian experts also sound a note of caution, saying that the regions densely populated towns and cities could be a source of risk. According to the New York Times, China and India are 10th and 13th on the list of destinations for travelers from countries affected with Ebola. Malik Peiris, director of the School of Public Health at the University of Hong Kong, told the paper that “The first thing at the top of their minds now is Ebola,” after a meeting with Chinese officials from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
