"At the request of the North Korean party, the authorities of Dandong have suspended the railway cargo traffic between North Korea and China ... Workers and loaders are on a 14-day quarantine in a hotel," a North Korean source told the Yonhap news agency.

North Korea made this decision after an outbreak of COVID-19 in the Chinese border city of Dandong.

The railway traffic will be suspended for at least 14 days.

The World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic on March 11, 2020.

To date, more than 512.85 million people have been infected with the coronavirus worldwide, with over 6.23 million fatalities, according to Johns Hopkins University.