Just over 700 people in North Korea had been tested for COVID-19 as of late last week, an in-country official from the World Health Organization (WHO) said Tuesday, the first time the organization has confirmed how many have been screened for the illness in the DPRK.

Speaking to Reuters over email, Dr. Edwin Salvador, who serves as the WHO Representative to the DPRK, also confirmed that diagnostic testing kits were sent to the DPRK from China in January.

“As of 2 April, 709 people — 11 foreigners and 698 nationals — have been tested for COVID-19. There is no report of a COVID-19 case,” Salvador said.

The WHO is reportedly receiving “weekly updates” from the DPRK Ministry of Public Health, he said, reporting that 24,842 people — including 380 foreigners — have been released from quarantine since December 31.

According to the report, two foreigners and 507 DPRK nationals remain under quarantine, bringing the total number of citizens quarantined so far to 24,969.

The WHO official also reiterated the North’s long-standing claim that the country has yet to detect any cases of coronavirus.

Those claims have drawn skepticism from many experts, who have also raised concern about the DPRK’s lack of diagnostic equipment and chronically underfunded healthcare sector.

Tuesday’s remarks will likely do little to stem those fears: while North Korea has reportedly tested only 709 people for COVID-19, South Korea has, in contrast, tested 477,304.

North Korea’s testing, one expert said, would also likely not be taking place across the country, but rather in select cities deemed high-priority to the leadership.

“It’s most likely that all these tests would be focused on Pyongyang, though some might have been used in Sinuiju or Nampo, as they are ‘frontline’ cities,” Andray Abrahamian, founder of the Coreana Connect NGO and a visiting scholar at George Mason University, said.

Responding to these concerns, the WHO official on Tuesday reportedly explained that only the DPRK’s “national reference laboratory” in Pyongyang had the capacity to test for COVID-19.

“The WHO has been informed that North Korea received primers and probes for use with PCR diagnostic tests from its ally China in January,” Salvador told Reuters.

While it remains unclear how many test kits and PCR machines China has provided the DPRK, Russia in late February also reported that it had sent 1500 diagnostic kits to the North.

In a shipment reportedly made on the request of the North Korean authorities, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) at the time said Moscow had “transferred 1,500 test systems for rapid laboratory diagnostics of this type of coronavirus to Pyongyang.”

International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) also received the green light from the UN in late February to send 10,000 test kits (RT-PCR reagents) and one RT-PCR diagnostic machine to the North, though it has reportedly encountered delays in shipping that aid.

Speaking to NK News late last week, the NGO reported the “global shortage of personal protective equipment and… export restrictions” were delaying the procurement of the items for North Korea, in addition to “border closures and the restrictions on incoming goods to DPRK.”

The WHO’s claims that 509 people remain under quarantine in North Korea reiterates state media’s most recent reporting last week that “some 500 people” remained under “medical observation.”

Edited by Oliver Hotham