In its latest sign of paranoia over COVID-19, North Korean state media recently warned that smoking tobacco could increase a person’s risk of getting the virus — a claim that is still not strongly supported by research.

Just a week after the country’s rubber-stamp parliament adopted a renewed “Tobacco-Prohibition Law,” North Korea’s Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported on Sunday that “doctors and experts around the world are pleading smokers to quit as they have a high risk of contracting the malignant virus.”