Coronavirus: Indonesia scrambles to find first patients’ close contacts as Widodo urges calm
- Authorities are still tracking about 50 members of a dance community that was frequented by one of the patients, says country’s disease prevention head
- News of Indonesia’s first cases sent Jakarta residents into a buying frenzy, with hand sanitisers, instant noodles and water flying off the shelves
It comes as Jakarta’s governor, Anies Baswedan, said he would stop issuing permits for mass gatherings in the city, fuelling another rush of panic buying in the Indonesian capital.
Health Minister Terawan Agus Putranto on Monday told media that one of the two Indonesians who tested positive, a 31-year-old woman who works as a dance coach, had met a Japanese woman at a club in Jakarta on February 14. The Japanese woman, 41, was later confirmed to have the coronavirus after she returned to Malaysia.
The Indonesian woman is thought to have passed the virus on to her 64-year-old mother, with both being treated in an isolation ward at Sulianti Saroso Infectious Diseases Hospital in Jakarta – where six others suspected of being infected with the virus have also been quarantined, according to The Jakarta Post.