Turkey has started providing people with free of charge masks due to the COVID-19 outbreak, Deutsche Welle Turkish service reported on Monday.
The masks will reportedly be delivered to people between the ages of 20 and 65 as those above and below that range have already been restricted from leaving their homes. Each person will be entitled to a package of five masks every week, and the delivery will be free.
At first, the distribution was planned to be carried out by the country’s national mail service, PTT. However, the PTT’s website has crashed due to an overwhelming number of requests, and the service was switched to “e-devlet,” the national website designed for certain services to citizens.
As of April 5 Turkey officially reported 27,069 cases of COVID-19 with a death toll of 574.
First seen in the Chinese city of Wuhan, COVID-19 has spread rapidly around the world, infecting nearly 1,300,000 people worldwide and killing more than 70,000. Some 275,000 people have recovered, according to Worldometers.info.