North Korea’s Kim Jong-un contracted Covid during country’s outbreak, says sister

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un was “seriously ill with a high fever” during the country’s Covid outbreak, his sister has said in what appears to be the first acknowledgement that he had contracted the infection.

The secretive country has never confirmed how many people caught Covid-19 since confirming its outbreak in May. Instead, Pyongyang has only reported cases of fever and deaths due to it.

Kim Yo-jong, Mr Kim’s sister and a senior official in his regime, said: “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.”