Prior to his appointment, Yurianto had mixed up diseases and viruses when answering The Jakarta Post’s questions about a Japanese citizen who had tested positive for the novel coronavirus upon his return from a trip to Indonesia.
he government appointed on Tuesday the Disease Control and Prevention Directorate General’s secretary, Achmad Yurianto , spokesperson for all coronavirus-related matters following the country’s first confirmed cases of COVID-19.
Presidential Secretariat deputy head of protocol, press and media Bey Triadi Machmudin said in a statement that Yurianto would handle all questions related to the coronavirus.
Prior to his appointment, Yurianto had mixed up diseases and viruses when answering The Jakarta Post’s questions about a Japanese citizen who had tested positive for the novel coronavirus upon his return from a trip to Indonesia.
“There [in Japan], he was diagnosed by doctors to have been infected with SARS coronavirus type 2,” Yurianto told the Post on Feb. 25.
He had insisted that Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) was different from COVID-19.
"What we have now is a COVID-19 epidemic. There are experts saying that COVID-19 is different from SARS CoV-2 and that the differences reach 70 percent,” he said.
Read also: Patient in Cianjur did not die from COVID-19: Health Ministry
The International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV), which is responsible for naming and classifying new viruses, announced on Feb. 11 that the virus that caused COVID-19 had been named SARS-CoV-2.
The World Health Organization has also published a special webpage on the naming of the new coronavirus, with a section titled "Why do the virus and the disease have different names?", providing a clear explanation. (nal)
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