From 21 to 30 April, 2020, the “Media Advocate” initiative followed online media reports on the RA Minister of Health, Arsen Torosyan’s personality and activities.
35 leading Armenian news agencies have been monitored.
In the specified period, 502 articles were declared, 48 of which were negative, 1 was positive and 453 were neutral.
No positive articles were published on RA Minister of Health Arsen Torosyan. Arsen Torosyan remains in the spotlight of criticism in the context of the fight against coronavirus in the country.
Nune Nersisyan, the founder-president of “Paracelsus” NGO, referring to Arsen Torosyan, noted that the Minister had failed in the field of healthcare. “When my colleagues and I have been warning since January that coronavirus is spreading around the world, we need to prevent it, our Health Minister was mocking at journalists stating that coronavirus is not a dangerous virus. I don’t know why it became dangerous for him today. When me and people like me demanded that the population should not be treated like that, he was again mocking at us saying we are members of the Panic Spreading Committee. He used to call it dinosaur flu, bird flu. This is a failed healthcare run by an abnormal organizer.”
According to another publication, there is no shortage of coronavirus tests in Armenia, as the Armenian government has purchased 320.000 tests from China and Poland. Furthermore, 100.000 tests were donated by the People’s Republic of China. In addition, there were donations from various organizations, WHO and individual benefactors, it refers to both Rapid and PCR tests: the total number of donations reaches 49.700. Media considers this circumstance surprising and raises a question: why in that case up to 700-750 tests are performed daily?
