N. Korea says no new fever cases amid COVID data doubts

North Korea reported no new Covid-19 cases for the first time on Saturday since it abruptly admitted to its first domestic COVID-19 outbreak and placed its 26 million people under more restrictions in May. The North’s state emergency anti-epidemic center said it had found zero fever patients in the latest 24-hour period.

It said its total caseload was about 4.8 million and that about 99.99% of them have fully recovered. The country’s death count remains at 74, a mortality rate of 0.0016% that would be the world’s lowest if true. There have been widespread outside doubts about the accuracy of North Korean statistics as its reported fatalities sit low and daily cases of the virus have been plummeting fast.