North Korea has blamed its Covid-19 outbreak on balloons sent over its border with the South by groups of defectors, in an apparent attempt to shift the blame onto its neighbour.
After two years of insisting that it had not recorded a single case of the virus, the North admitted its first infections on 12 May, sparking fears of a public health disaster in the impoverished country.
On Friday, the country reported that 4,570 people were newly displaying fever symptoms, bringing the total caseload to 4.74 million. Health authorities refer to fever symptoms rather than Covid-19, apparently due to a shortage of testing kits. The North has reported only 73 deaths.
