An employee of a Songyo Knitwear factory in the Songyo District of Pyongyang disinfects the work floor, May 18, after the North Korean leader Kim Jong -un said Tuesday his party would treat the country's coronavirus outbreak as a state emergency.

North Korea said Friday that nearly 10 percent of its 26 million people have fallen ill and 65 people have died amid its first COVID-19 outbreak, as outside experts question the validity of its reported fatalities and worry about a possible humanitarian crisis.

After admitting the Omicron outbreak last week following more than two years of claiming to be coronavirus-free, North Korea has said an "unidentified fever" has been explosively spreading across the country since late April. Its anti-epidemic center has since released fever tallies each morning via state media, but they don't include any COVID-19 figures.

Some observers say North Korea was likely forced to acknowledge the COVID-19 outbreak because it couldn't hide the highly contagious viral spread among its people and suffer possible public discontent with leader Kim Jong-un. They believe North Korean authorities are underreporting mortalities to try to show that its pandemic response is effective, while the country lacks test kits to confirm a large number of virus cases.

''It's true that there has been a hole in its two-and-a-half years of pandemic fighting,'' said Kwak Gil Sup, head of One Korea Center, a website specializing in North Korea affairs. ''But there is a saying that North Korea is a theater state, and I think they are massaging COVID-19 statistics.''

Kwak said North Korea is likely partly using the outbreak as a propaganda tool to show that it is overcoming the pandemic with Kim's leadership. But the country has ''a Plan B'' and ''a Plan C'' to seek Chinese and other foreign aid if the pandemic gets out of hand, he said.

On Friday, the North's state emergency epidemic prevention headquarters said 263,370 more people had "fever symptoms" and two more people died, bringing the total cases to 2.24 million and fatalities to 65. They said 754,810 people remain quarantined, according to the official Korean Central News Agency.