Indonesia Estimates 1/2 Million People Had Close Contact With COVID-19 Suspect Cases

The Covid-19 outbreak is a bit like an extremely long horror movie that gets scarier and scarier as it goes on.

At the start, you think you can handle things, in the middle you start to get worried, and near the end, you wonder if you’ll make it out alive.

But imagine if there were someone next to you at the beginning of the horror film telling you all the scary things that were going to happen throughout the film.

It would simply increase your anxiety, wouldn’t it? Well, Covid-19 is no different. Every day, the future seems to get scarier and scarier.

And today, the word “million” appears and I want to wake up at 2021.

Indonesia Estimates 1/2 Million People Had Close Contact With COVID-19 Suspect Cases

Over half a million people in Indonesia may have had contact with Covid-19 suspects, the Indonesian authorities said.

According to The Star, this “high risk” group of between 600,000 and 700,000 people are scattered across the country, with South Jakarta being the worst-hit.

You might think that this is normal, considering Indonesia is the world’s fourth most populous country, with a population of 270 million.

But the country only has a total of 450 confirmed Covid-19 cases at the moment, after reporting 81 new cases on Saturday (21 March); why is this the case?

Testing System Criticised

Now, there is one very simple but obviously detrimental way to avoid having Covid-19 cases; have defective or inadequate testing equipment.

How can there be an epidemic if there are no patients, right?

You see, back in February, Indonesia had no Covid-19 cases, and Indonesia’s Health Minister called it a “blessing from God”.

But some were skeptical. Not that they were atheists and didn’t believe in God or anything, but because researchers claimed that the country should have had “at least some confirmed cases given the high number of passengers who routinely fly to the country from Wuhan, the Chinese city at the epicenter of the outbreak.”

In other words, researchers were questioning whether Indonesia had proper testing equipment to detect the coronavirus.

And while the Indonesian Health Minister called the research “insulting”, he later had to eat his words because the country reported its first two cases a fortnight later.

But even after reporting 450 infections and 38 deaths, some still feel that the country is slow in detecting infections.

Low Levels of Testing

This is because there have been several cases where patients with pneumonia were only found to have had the coronavirus after they died or just a day prior to their deaths.

And it’s not just that they are slow in detecting these infections, they may not be detecting them at all in some cases.

Jusuf Kalla, the head of the country’s Red Cross, told Reuters that Indonesia is likely to have a far higher number of coronavirus cases than it has reported, due to low levels of testing.

“If the tests are low, then the cases are low,” said Kalla, adding that the true number of cases should be revealed once Indonesia gets more test results from laboratories to step up testing.

President Joko Widodo earlier announced that Indonesia had started rapid testing for the virus on Friday afternoon (20 March).

Indonesia was also importing 200,000 test kits from Korea and 500,000 from other countries, including for rapid tests, Kalla said.

Kalla added that the country needs to consider tougher measures like a lockdown, and advised authorities to be open and accurate with their information to ensure they were “prepared for the worst”.

I just want the Covid-19 ghost to jump out and scare me already so this horror movie can finally end.

And hopefully, every single 1 of the 500,000 is fine. We still need Indomie.