After maintaining what appeared to be a perfect two-and-a-half-year record without COVID-19, North Korea announced last Thursday that an unspecified number of people in Pyongyang had tested positive for the Omicron variant.
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Just three days later, state media reported a total of 42 deaths and 820,620 suspected cases, with 324,550 people under medical care.
On Tuesday, the country's state media reported 269,510 more people with "feverish symptoms", at least 663,910 people in quarantine and another six deaths.
That raised the total to 56 COVID-19-related deaths and more than 1.48 million reported "fever cases".
North Korea isn't saying how many of the "fever cases" have been confirmed as the virus. But experts believe most to be COVID-19.
North Korea surprised the world by admitting to the outbreak last week.
Describing it as a "great upheaval", leader Kim Jong Un ordered the country into lockdown, restricting the travel of people and supplies.
Mr Kim went on to publicly criticize his own government's health officials over what he is portrayed as a botched pandemic response.
He told a ruling party politburo meeting on Sunday that medicine supplies were not being distributed to pharmacies in time because of their "irresponsible work" and lack of organization attitude. It is no secret that North Korea is a country that keeps its cards close to its chest. So why admit to having coronavirus at all?
Professor Robert Kelly, of South Korea's Pusan National University, says he believes the country must be "pretty desperate" to come forward.
"This is the kind of thing that North Korea usually doesn't tell us, because it wants to present a front that things are great. I have a feeling that if they are breaking that front, then things are bad pretty," he told ABC News.