Coronavirus: First death in Turkey confirmed

Disinfection works are being carried out by specialists, wearing protective suits, at Beylerbeyi Palace as part of precautions against the coronavirus (COVID-19), on 16 March, 2020 in Istanbul, Turkey [Erhan Elaldı/Anadolu Agency]

Turkey confirmed its first novel coronavirus-related death late yesterday as the number of cases in the country has risen to 98.

Health Minister of Turkey Fahrettin Koca announced the first death of an 89-year-old man due to the coronavirus.

“The patient that fell victim to coronavirus is found to have contracted the disease from a Chinese employee,” he said.

In its bid to tackle misinformation about the pandemic, Turkey yesterday identified 93 suspects who have made provocative and misleading posts on social media about the coronavirus outbreak and detained 19 of them, the Interior Ministry said.

READ: Media bias is politicising the coronavirus pandemic coverage

It has also taken measures to quarantine 10,330 pilgrims who have return after completing Umrah in Saudi Arabia, local TV station NTV reported on Monday.

Turkey on Monday imposed flight bans on six more countries including the UK and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), bringing the total number of countries to 20, the health minister announced.

Unless otherwise stated in the article above, this work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. If the image(s) bear our credit, this license also applies to them. What does that mean? For other permissions, please contact us.