The Associated Press reported that North Korean health officials reported an additional 270,000 cases of "fever" believed to be carbon dioxide.
According to the Korean Central News Agency, the country has reported over one million cases offever and 56 deaths since April.
Poor testing capabilities throughout the country have made it hard for it to diagnose cases in thefever outbreak.
In May 2020 North Korea locked down and used a COVID-zero approach to avoid exposure to the coronaviruses. The official COVID-19 statistics have been questioned by experts.
The first case of the Omicron variant of the coronaviruses was announced last Thursday in the capital city of the Hermit Kingdom.
Case numbers and deaths have continued to increase.
The military parade held on April 25 is believed to have started the outbreak. Several members of the military began showing symptoms of chronic bronchitis after the parade.
An unnamed border security official told Radio Free Asia that after testing, it was confirmed that they had been exposed to the Omicron variant.
In response to the widespread outbreak, the country of 25 million mobilized nearly a million public health workers to contain infections and started quarantining citizens with thefever.
The country is one of only two in the world that does not allow global vaccine-sharing programs.
John P. Moore, a professor of immunology at Cornell University, told The Washington Post that a large portion of the population could be exposed to the disease.
He said that the carnage could affect the regime.
J. Stephen Morrison, director of the Global Health Policy Center at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told The Post that North Korea's poor virus control could breed new and more resistant subvariants of Omicron.
North Korea has a huge immunity gap, no protection acquired with vaccines or prior infections, which makes it an open field for transmission.
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