Tuba Sahin
07 May 2020•Update: 07 May 2020
ANKARA
Turkey has set a price limit of maximum 1 Turkish lira ($0.14) -- including VAT -- for face masks, the country's Trade Ministry announced Thursday.
Starting this Friday in Istanbul, medical masks can be sold in markets, pharmacies, companies selling medical devices and through e-trade platforms.
It will be put into practice in major cities and provinces later.
"Our goal is to provide our citizens medical masks in an easiest and fastest way with this wide sales network," the ministry said in a statement.
The country, which earlier banned the sale of face masks, allowed its retail on Monday as part of the normalization process.
Turkey, on April 5, started distributing face masks free-of-charge to citizens to stem the spread of COVID-19.
It banned people from entering shops and marketplaces without a protective mask.
Turkey has recorded 131,744 coronavirus cases so far with 78,202 recoveries and 3,584 deaths, according to Health Minister Fahrettin Koca.
Turkey currently ranks among the top 10 countries in the world that have conducted the most virus tests, with its total number of tests exceeding 1.23 million.
After first appearing in Wuhan, China in December, the infection has spread to at least 187 countries and regions.
The global virus-linked death toll exceeds 264,000, with more than 3.76 million cases, according to a running tally by US-based Johns Hopkins University. Additionally, nearly 1.25 million people worldwide have recovered from the disease.
