Many Are Skeptical About The Absence Of A Corona Case In Indonesia

Illustrations (Irfan Meidianto / VOI)

JAKARTA - The international public is skeptical of Indonesia's condition where no coronavirus cases have been found. There are also those who think that the not finding cases of the corona virus in Indonesia is due to the inability to detect the presence of the virus.

One party who is both skeptical and worried about Indonesia's condition, which has no track record of the corona virus, is Australia. As quoted by The Sydney Morning Herald, the Australian Government is worried about the fate of its citizens on vacation on the island of Bali.

This is because Bali is the second most visited destination for Australians. They are still questioning whether it is true that not a single case of the corona virus has been found there.

Chief medical officer Brendan Murphy feels doubtful if there are no cases of the coronavirus in Indonesia yet. "It would be a bit surprising that there were no cases," he said.

Curtin University infectious disease expert, Archie Clements considers Indonesia's public health system to be relatively weak. So that the ability to detect and respond to cases of the corona virus is considered to be not optimal.

"It is very likely that there is an undetected corona virus there," added Clements.

"Indonesia is not like China and I seriously question whether Indonesia's public health capabilities are as effective as the Chinese government," he added.

Clements said Indonesia should be encouraged to report any detected cases of the coronavirus to avoid a repeat of the SARS epidemic, which spread rapidly because of the Chinese government's initial hesitation to share information about the outbreak.

"There is no advantage whatsoever if any country tries to hide the coronavirus," he said.

The media is skeptical

Apart from the Australian side, skepticism also emerged from several international and regional media.

The Guardian, for example, in its misrepresentation, described the emergence of a sense of skepticism about the conditions in Indonesia where there was no coronavirus.

The Guardian describes the conditions that exist in Indonesia related to the corona virus. First, for example, when Indonesia evacuated 238 Indonesian citizens from Wuhan, China. And when the Indonesian citizens were successfully evacuated, it turned out that not one of them was infected with the corona virus.

Thank you Natuna community Thank you Indonesia 🇮🇩We are healthy, we are strong 💪 # Alertviruscorona pic.twitter.com/WCTQXPp2ZU

- Indonesian Ministry of Health (@KemenkesRI) February 4, 2020

In addition, other media that raise skeptical news about the condition of Indonesia being free from corona, namely straitstimes.com. In his news, entitled 'Corona Virus: There are no confirmed cases in Indonesia, attracts attention', describes several reasons why this condition is questionable.

One of the reasons is because currently more than two dozen countries have been infected. Only in Indonesia that is still "clean" even though the neighboring countries have already been infected on average.

Meanwhile, data as of today, there have been 43,108 cases of corona virus recorded worldwide. While 1,018 people were recorded as dead and 4,056 people who recovered.

In addition, the spread of the corona virus has spread to 28 countries. Meanwhile, Indonesia is the only country that is not infected among its neighboring countries. For example, Singapore has recorded 45 cases, Malaysia 18 cases, Philippines 3 cases, and in the southern part of Indonesia, Australia there are 15 cases.

Thermal scanner at Soekarno Hatta airport (Irfan Meidianto / VOI)

Starting from a study at Harvard University

Concern about the condition of the corona virus in Indonesia arose when a study from Harvard University analyzed the chances of the spread of the corona virus based on the process of evacuating citizens other than China to their home countries.

As written by The Guardian, this study examines the potential for the spread of the Corona virus to other countries based on the number of trips or flights from Wuhan to that country. The results of the analysis are quite precise, for example when predicting the number of Corona virus cases in Vietnam and Singapore.

International passengers who have just arrived at Soekarno-Hatta Airport after the information on the corona outbreak has spread in China (Irfan Meidianto / VOI)

Meanwhile in Indonesia the results did not match what was predicted. The reason is that according to the research, based on this research, cases of the corona virus should have been found, but until now, there has not been a single word about it.

"Indonesia has not reported any cases (of Corona virus transmission) and in our opinion, there should be several cases now," said Marc Lipsitch, a scientist from Harvard University who was involved in the study to the ABC.

However, it should be noted that the study, published in the journal medRxiv on Wednesday, February 5, has not been reviewed or evaluated by other scientists. Usually in a process called peer-review weaknesses will be found in a study.