Thursday, an Emirati court sentenced two people to two years in prison, one of them a journalist, against the backdrop of a "fabricated" report about the death of five members of one family due to coronavirus, according to what the government news agency reported Thursday.

The story was published last August on one of the Abu Dhabi Sports Network channels, and the authorities said at the time that an investigation concluded that the story, which sparked a major debate on social media and among residents as "fabricated."

The government news agency said in a statement, "The Abu Dhabi Federal Court of Appeal has sentenced two defendants, one of whom is a local TV channel correspondent, to two years in prison, after they were convicted of broadcasting a fabricated story about the death of five people from one family as a result of infection with the new coronavirus."

The court also decided to "deport the accused resident from the state after the execution of the sentence."

The identity of the other accused was not revealed, but press reports stated that he was the person interviewed for the story, without his nationality known.

The UAE has recorded more than 138,000 cases of the emerging coronavirus, including 508 deaths due to the disease. The Gulf state often calls on the media to rely on official information and not to publish "false news" about the epidemic.

Agence France-Presse was unable to reach an official of the channel in question to speak about the case.