A US public health expert has refuted North Korea’s repeated claims of zero COVID-19 infections, saying that Pyongyang could potentially be dealing with domestic transmission.

“It’s really not very conceivable that they aren’t having transmission in North Korea,” epidemiologist Jonathan Mayer from the University of Washington told Voice of America on Thursday. The North could not have blocked the transmission, especially if the virus was circulating in China, he added.

Pyongyang maintains it has yet to report a single infection. It had reportedly quarantined nearly 10,000 people in the country, and has released at least 8,000 of them. It lifted the quarantine on about 400 foreigners as well, the North’s Korean Central News Agency said Saturday.

In early March, dozens of foreign diplomats posted in Pyongyang, the capital, shuttered offices and left the country, following weeks of “forced quarantine” that confined foreign nationals to their premises to contain COVID-19.

At the time, Tomas Ojea Quintana, UN special rapport for human rights in North Korea, urged the North to grant full access for medical and humanitarian experts, as a widespread infection would endanger the already malnourished North Korean population.

By Choi Si-young (siyoungchoi@heraldcorp.com)