Minister of Health of Armenia Arsen Torosyan posted the following on his Facebook page:

“The number of coronavirus cases is growing, but what is also growing is the number of people who believe in conspiracy theories. This is a matter of concern for the Ministry of Health from the perspective that people might not be alert anymore, and this means all this will lead to the increase in the number of cases.

Users state that ‘people are going to be chipped’, ‘there is no such thing as a coronavirus’, ‘we won’t catch the virus’, ‘this is bluff’, ‘it’s all a lie’ and ‘this is for receiving funding from abroad’ and also state their ‘opinions’ in the comments sections of articles released by the presses. Mass media outlets also provide wide coverage of these opinions.

The Ministry of Health wouldn’t like to see people lose alertness, and if things continue at this rate, we will have to transfer the data of those spreading false and unfounded news to the law-enforcement authorities to understand who expresses these opinions and why they want to harm our citizens.

Taking into consideration the statistics of the past few days, we urge our compatriots to be more attentive and follow all the instructions to stop the pace of the spread of the virus. We also call on everyone to follow the official news as a reliable source of information.”