TIRANA – North Macedonia’s Health Minister Venko Filipce on Saturday urged media outlets to end unconfirmed reports on COVID-19 situation in the country. Via a Facebook message, Filipce said that many media outlets had published reports containing unofficial and inaccurate information related to the number of the new coronavirus cases in the country.
“For 100 days, we have been informing the public in a precise and transparent manner, revealing all details about new COVID-19 cases in order to provide the media with accurate information,” Filipce wrote. He called on the media to stop preparing reports with speculation and unverified information on the number of infections in the country, adding that these reports led the public to lose trust in institutions.
North Macedonia has seen an increase in the number of new coronavirus cases recently as a result of failure to comply with the measures on gatherings, Filipce said in a press conference on Friday.
He announced that 180 newly infected people and two deaths were recorded over the past 24 hours, a new record since the first case was registered in late February. The total confirmed cases in the country now stand at 2,790, and 149 people have died.
Filipce said about 90% of newly infected people are members and relatives of 15 families, and that the second wave of the epidemic in North Macedonia was the result of people ignoring the ban on mass gatherings. More than a half of the new cases are from the capital, Skopje. /argumentum.al
