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Travel advisory issued amid virus outbreak
Near, far, wherever you are: Passengers wearing masks enter the Beijing West Railway Station in Beijing on Monday
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ear, far, wherever you are: Passengers wearing masks enter the Beijing West Railway Station in Beijing on Monday. Chinese authorities said the number of patients of an outbreak of a new coronavirus in the country had tripled and a third person had died. (Reuters/Stringer)
The Health Ministry has issued a travel advisory for Indonesians who wish to travel to countries affected by the Wuhan coronavirus and handed out health alert cards (HACs) to passengers arriving from China and other affected countries.
“The ministry has had a travel advisory in place since Jan. 3 and disseminated information on wearing masks to officials at airports that are directly in touch with passengers, such as ground handlers and immigration officers, in an effort to prevent the spread of infection,” Soekarno-Hatta International Airport health authority chief Anas Ma’ruf said on Monday.
He said all 135 entry points to the country had been equipped with thermal scanners that could identify a person’s body temperature remotely through a camera.
“We already equipped all entry points with thermal scanners that are operating routinely. We have also trained our officers out in the field to identify passengers who have possible symptoms,” Anas told The Jakarta Post.
The Health Ministry’s disease control and prevention director general, Anung Sugihartono, said the ministry had released the travel advisory for people wishing to travel to affected countries.
“There is no travel ban on China, only a travel advisory. We still welcome tourists from China and allow people to travel there. However, we have increased our vigilance regarding the virus,” he said.
He added the ministry made it compulsory for all travelers arriving from China to fill out a HAC.
“Once they arrive at the ports, they will be given a yellow HAC that must be filled out with [information on] identity. The travelers must keep the cards for around one or two weeks, and if they have symptoms of the virus, they could show the cards to health officials,” he said.
He also said there was no vaccine for the Wuhan coronavirus, as the existing pneumonia vaccine was ineffective.
“The three types of pneumonia vaccines that are available in Indonesia — Synflorix, Pneumosil and Prevnar — are not effective against the Wuhan coronavirus. The Wuhan coronavirus and pneumonia have different strains, and therefore the vaccines are incompatible,” he added.
Besides the ministry, the Indonesian Respiratory Doctors Association also urged Indonesians to remain calm and promptly visit a doctor if they experienced high fever, coughing and breathing difficulties.
In Riau Islands province, Batam, Hang Nadim International Airport’s authority said Batik Air flights that connected the island with Chinese city Shenzen were operating as normal.
“Alhamdulillah [thank God] it’s still operating normally,” airport director Suwarso told the Post on Friday.
According to the doctors association, the virus has spread outside China, with Japan, Thailand, South Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore’s port authorities having quarantined travelers who are suspected to be infected.
As of late Sunday, 198 cases in total had been reported in Wuhan, including three deaths. Some 170 people were still being treated in the hospital, while 25 had been cured, Reuters reported.
The new virus belongs to the same family of coronaviruses that causes Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), which killed nearly 800 people globally during an outbreak between 2002 and 2003 that also started in China.
Meanwhile, in China, the Wuhan outbreak has spread to more cities, authorities said on Monday, as the number of patients tripled and a third person died, stoking concerns about containment of the illness as hundreds of millions of Chinese tourists will begin traveling domestically and abroad for the Lunar New Year.
The Daxing health commission in the capital Beijing said it had confirmed two cases of the coronavirus, while the southern Guangdong province's health commission confirmed one case in Shenzhen. They mark the first cases in China beyond the central city of Wuhan where the virus first emerged.
The Wuhan Municipal Health Commission said 136 new cases of pneumonia caused by the coronavirus strain had been found in the city over the weekend, adding to 62 already known cases. A third death occurred on Saturday, the authority said in a statement.
This brings the total number of known cases worldwide to more than 200.
South Korea on Monday reported its first confirmed case of the coronavirus, a 35-year-old female Chinese national who had traveled from Wuhan, the fourth patient to be reported outside China.
Authorities around the globe, including in the United States and many Asian countries, have stepped up screening of travelers from Wuhan. Last week, two cases were reported in Thailand and one in Japan. All three involved people from Wuhan or people who recently visited the city.
China's National Health Commission said on Sunday it would step up prevention efforts, but acknowledged it still did not know the source of the virus.
The World Health Organization said on Twitter Monday that "an animal source seems the most likely primary source" with "some limited human-to-human transmission occurring between close contacts", AFP reported.
It said the new cases in China were the result of "increased searching and testing for [the virus] among people sick with respiratory illness".
Scientists with the MRC Center for Global Infectious Disease Analysis at Imperial College in London warned in a paper published Friday that the number of cases in the city was likely to be closer to 1,700, much higher than the number officially identified. (mpr)
