Dozens of Turkish citizens who recently returned from abroad have tried to escape the facilities where they were being kept under quarantine over suspicions of the coronavirus.
According to the Erzurum Governor’s Office, 28 runaways were apprehended by the police in Çorum province as they were trying to reach Erzurum, their hometown.
They were sent to Konya and Ankara for quarantine.
Meanwhile citizens in Konya who were quarantined after their return from Umrah, a pilgrimage to the holy cities of Mecca and Madinah, got involved in a fight with police since they wanted to leave the dormitory.
Turkey uses student dormitories in at least 16 provinces for coronavirus quarantines, with police and health professionals stationed at the facilities. A normal quarantine lasts 14 days.
Also in Konya, three patients who were isolated in a hospital room after displaying COVID-19 symptoms had tried to escape the building, according to the Turkish media.
First seen in the Chinese city of Wuhan, COVID-19, caused by the novel coronavirus, has spread rapidly around the world, infecting more than 190,000 people worldwide and killing nearly 7,500.
Turkey announced yesterday that the number of coronavirus cases in country had reached 47.