Fri 20 March 2020:
The Turkish authorities have detained a total of 64 people for disseminating false information about COVID-19 epidemic via social media, the country’s Interior Ministry said.
“[The authorities] identified 242 people who posted false and provocative information about coronavirus in social media. Of these, 64 people were detained.
Work is underway to detain other persons who engaged in such activities,” the ministry wrote on Twitter.
Earlier in the day, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said that the number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Turkey increased by 88 percent to 359 within the past 24 hours. Meanwhile, four people died of the disease.
The World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic on March 11. More than 240,000 people have been infected with the coronavirus worldwide, with over 10,000 fatalities, according to John Hopkins University.
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