Sister of Kim Jong-un talks on his serious illness

Kim Jong-un's influential sister, Kim Yo-jong, has suggested that her brother had contracted the virus, saying that he had been among the tens of millions of North Koreans to have come down with a “fever”, Report informs referring to the Guardian.

“Even though he was seriously ill with a high fever, he could not lie down for a moment thinking about the people he had to take care of until the end in the face of the anti-epidemic war,” she said.

Since May this year, North Korea has reported about 4.8 million cases of “fever” among its population of 26 million but identified only a fraction of them as Covid, possibly to avoid creating public alarm and because of a lack of testing kits.

Experts have cast doubt on North Korea’s low death toll and official reports of zero new cases since July 29. The country has one of the world’s worst healthcare systems, with ill-equipped hospitals, few intensive care units, and no Covid-19 treatment drugs or vaccines.