Ministry of Health, at the request of the Association of Journalists of Macedonia (AJM) in the coming days, will organize a free screening for journalists and media workers for COVID – 19.

In the last period, the journalists and media workers who report on the field about the activities of the participants in the early parliamentary elections, due to the increased workload, are additionally exposed to the virus COVID – 19. Also, AJM received information that in some national media there are new positive cases of infected journalists and media workers, but also colleagues suspected of being infected.

Based on that, but also on the need to give priority to journalists and media workers, the screening will be conducted in two rounds.

The first round will cover journalists and media workers from the information programs from larger media to determine how many employees are infected. This will help prevent the spread of the disease in these newsrooms where more people are working at the same time in a limited space. According to the initial estimation, the purpose is to cover at least 500 journalists and media workers in the first round in a period of 3 days, and depending on the outcome of this, the time frame and the manner of conducting the screening in the second round will be planned accordingly.

Larger newsrooms will receive more detailed information tomorrow to make a proper screening schedule. For the other smaller newsrooms, additional screening information will follow after the first round.