Sam Smith has said they are “100%” convinced they have had coronavirus.

The Oscar-winning singer is currently self-isolating with their sister, and said that shortly before lockdown was implemented in the UK, they had been experiencing symptoms of Covid-19.

“I didn’t get tested but I know I [had] it, 100% [had] it,” they told Zane Lowe on Apple Music.

“I’m just going to assume that I did because everything I’ve read completely pointed to that. So yeah, I think I definitely had it.”

They continued: “As soon as I had it, my sister five days after me started getting the same symptoms. So me and her just isolated for three weeks because we knew. It was clear. Because I’ve got an older nan and stuff, so we didn’t want to risk anything.

“I got it about two weeks before the UK really hit. Well, I think I got it. I don’t 100% know. But I got it and then as everyone was kind of really on lock down, that’s when I got over it, luckily.” 

During their period of self-isolation – days before lockdown measures were introduced in the UK – Sam shared an Instagram post joking about the situation, going through what they suggested were the the various stages of “quarantine meltdown”.

The post went down badly on social media, due to the chart-topping star’s privilege compared to others affected by the coronavirus outbreak, and has repeatedly been held up as an example of celebrities’ behaviour during the crisis.

Addressing the backlash for the first time on Friday morning, Sam insisted: “It was probably bad timing of me, but I use my social media as if it’s just my friends on it. I posted with my humour and stuff, but it just didn’t get picked up very well, but I didn’t mean any malice by it at all.

“You know me, I’m always sharing all of my feelings all the time and trying to be as human as possible but sometimes maybe people can read it wrongly but that wasn’t really meaning it in a malicious or nasty way, I was just trying to be myself.”