Indonesian President Joko Widodo yesterday said he would be tested for COVID-19, while some of his ministers had also undergone precautionary tests after the Southeast Asian country’s transport minister tested positive for the disease.
Indonesian Minister of Transportation Budi Karya Sumadi was receiving treatment at an army hospital in Jakarta, Indonesian Minister of State Secretariat Pratikno said on Saturday.
A hospital spokesman said that Sumadi was encountering difficulty breathing, but that his condition was improving.
Pratikno said that Sumadi was involved in virus mitigation efforts, particularly the evacuation of Indonesians from centers of the outbreak, and that Widodo had called for tests to be carried out on other ministers.
Cases of the virus in Indonesia, the world’s fourth-most populous country, have jumped from zero two weeks ago to 117, with five deaths, government spokesperson Achmad Yurianto said.
He also said the virus has spread outside Greater Jakarta to Bandung in West Java, Solo in Central Java, Manado in North Sulawesi and Pontianak in West Kalimantan, as well as to holiday havens Yogyakarta and Bali.
Following the increase, the government on Saturday established a task force on COVID-19 mitigation.
Jakarta’s Governor Anies Baswedan announced that schools would close for two weeks starting today, and ordered the closure of city-owned tourist attractions, such as Ragunan Zoo and Ancol beach.
He emphasized that Jakarta would not be locked down, but urged people “to be responsible” and called for social distancing when possible.
Similarly, the administration of Solo on Friday announced that schools and tourist attractions would close after a coronavirus patient died in the region.
The WHO has said it is particularly concerned about high-risk nations with weaker health systems, which might lack the facilities to identify cases.
A day after declaring the coronavirus outbreak to be pandemic this week, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called Widodo and both agreed to “scale up cooperation.”
Additional reporting by Reuters
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